


Stella and the Wolf

by DiscontentedWinter



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Cliffhangers, Ignore the Middle - The End Will Make it Right, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, So many cliffhangers, Stilinski Family Feels, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-10-13 01:31:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 52,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17478710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscontentedWinter/pseuds/DiscontentedWinter
Summary: Stiles Stilinski is trying to juggle homework, high school, stupid dumb crushes on unattainable people, and werewolves. Keeping the supernatural secret from his dad is hard enough, but when it comes to Stella, his eight-year-old sister, it turns out it’s impossible.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: I won't be updating this every day. It'll probably be about once a week. I'm actually trying something new, and that's to relax a little!

 

 

“Dad!” Stella yells as she comes thumping down the stairs. “Stiles let a werewolf in the house!”

Stiles freezes for a second, his pop tarts burning his fingers as he grabs them from the toaster. Then his brain reminds him that this _hurts_ , and he swears under his breath as he juggles them onto a plate, spinning around to see what their dad’s reaction is going to be.

“Did he?” Dad asks mildly as Stella storms into the kitchen. He doesn’t even look up from whatever message he’s reading on his phone. “No werewolves in the house, son.”

“Right,” Stiles says, and smirks at Stella. “No werewolves in the house.”

“It’s true!” Stella bellows. “Dad! It’s _true_!”

Stella’s eight. She has a vivid imagination, and she can stick to a lie for weeks. Dad probably thinks this is just like the time that she claimed she ate twelve donuts in one sitting, or that Mrs. Sanders from across the road is really a bank robber, or that she punched a zombie so hard that its head fell off.

Stella Stilinski is a lying liar who lies.

Stiles makes a face at her, his heart thumping wildly, and escapes with his pop tarts to the living room.

“You’re not eating pop tarts for dinner, are you?” Dad calls after him.

“Of course not!” Stiles yells back.

Stiles Stilinski is also a lying liar who lies.

It runs in the family.

 

***

 

Dad has been on night shift this week, so Stiles has to get Stella to bed. They used to have a sitter, Mrs. Levinson, but she moved to Florida a few weeks ago, and even before that her knees weren’t great, so Stiles usually ended up taking Stella upstairs and putting her to bed anyway to save her the trip. When Mrs. Levinson retired, Dad made noise about hiring someone else, but Stiles is sixteen now, and it’s not like he’s incapable of looking after his sister at night, right? Also, this way Dad could up his allowance.

Except werewolves. Werewolves are a thing that happened. And werewolves and all their related supernatural fuckery do not respect the fact that Stiles can’t just go gallivanting around town at night anymore. Not that he should have been doing any nocturnal gallivanting in the first place, but, well. Stiles and impulse control have never been in a working relationship. When Mrs. Levinson was snoozing in front of the TV downstairs it was easy for Stiles to climb out his window and escape—hence the night he dragged Scott into the woods and Scott got bitten in the first place—but now? He can’t leave an eight-year-old kid alone in the house, and if he tells Dad that maybe they should look at getting another sitter after all, Dad’s going to want to know why. And Stiles doesn’t have an answer for that. At all.

So he stays in, and he locks the doors, and werewolves still happen.

Persistently.

Werewolves do not respect locked doors.

At least, Derek Hale doesn’t. He just uses a window instead.

Which is how he turned up last night, bleeding from somewhere underneath his ridiculously tight shirt, making vague threats about Scott having to stay away from the Argents—ha! As if Stiles or any power in the universe can stop him!—and generally growling and flashing his eyes and his fangs. And then, in the middle of bleeding all over Stiles’s floor, he’d suddenly stopped, winced as he’d straightened up, and said: “Who’s that?”

And Stiles had turned around to find Stella standing in his bedroom doorway in her My Little Pony pajamas, a teddy bear shoved under her arm, and a very suspicious look on her very suspicious little face.

“Oh, shit,” Stiles had said.

“I’m Stella,” Stella had announced. “Are you a werewolf?”

Derek had looked at Stiles.

Stiles had looked at Derek.

“Oh, shit,” Stiles had said again.

“You said a bad word,” Stella had informed him. “Twice!”

So werewolves are a thing, which Stiles has known for weeks, but now Stella also knows. Sometimes Stiles thinks his life can’t get any messier, and sometimes the universe laughs in his face and tells him to hold its beer and watch this.  

Stiles finishes his pop tarts while sitting on the couch with his feet on the coffee table. He can still hear Stella thumping around upstairs, probably still pissed because Dad didn’t believe her. For an eight-year-old, she can hold a grudge.

That’s probably genetic too.

Stiles grabs the remote control and channel surfs for a while. He looks up when Dad appears.

“I’m off,” Dad says. “Try to get to bed before midnight, huh?”

“Oh, totally,” Stiles lies. “Have a good shift, Dad.”

Dad shows him a tired smile. “Stella? I’m going to work!”

Stella comes thumping down the stairs again, flings herself into Dad’s arms for a hug, and then, when Dad leaves, sits down on the couch beside Stiles and glares at him.

“Go and have a shower,” he tells her. “It’s almost your bedtime.”

“You’re not the boss of me,” she grumbles, and then sighs, and her little body slumps into the couch cushions. “Will you come and read me a story?”

She’s still holding that grudge, Stiles knows, but story time is sacrosanct.

“Of course,” he tells her, like he’s dying to find out what happens in the next chapter of _Matilda_ and isn’t just humouring her.

Although, who is he kidding? He actually is dying to find out what happens next. _Matilda_ is awesome.

Stella grins at him, and goes upstairs to shower.

 

***

 

There’s a framed photograph in Stella’s bedroom. Dad took the picture. It’s Mom, with Stiles sitting on one side of her, and baby Stella—weird and new and squishy-faced—in her arms. It used to sit on the desk in Dad’s office, but he put it in Stella’s room after Mom died. On the frame, in beautiful cursive lettering it says, ‘Claudia, Agnieszka & Mieczysław’. By the time he was eight, Stiles was already calling himself Stiles. By the time Stella arrived, he was already calling her Stella, because Mom and Dad told him as soon as they found out that he was getting a little sister, and he wanted her to have a name that sounded like his.

Their nicknames both kind of stuck.

His Mom used to call him Mischief.

He wonders what she would have called Stella, but by the time Stella was already a few months old, some days Mom didn’t even remember she had a new baby.

She went downhill very fast, from diagnosis to death within the year.

Sometimes Stiles worries that there’s a time bomb inside his skull, and inside Stella’s. He sometimes worries that when he forgets something simple, or stumbles over a word, that it’s happening, that it’s already too late.

He looks away from the photograph, his throat aching, as Stella bounces into the room. She’s wearing Stiles’s old stud muffin t-shirt, which she’s stolen and claimed as pajamas even though it still fits Stiles, thanks very much, and a towel bundled around her wet hair.

Stiles sighs and picks up the comb from her dresser. If it were up to Stella she’d go to sleep with it like that, and wake up in the morning with a cross between a rat’s nest and a beehive. Stiles has learned this from bitter experience.

He sits down on Stella’s bed, shifting back so she can plant herself in front of him, and starts the work of getting the tangles out.

“Stiles?” she asks after a while. “Are werewolves a secret?”

Stiles’s stomach clenches. “Yeah. A big secret.”

“Dad says secrets are bad,” Stella reminds him. “That if grownups ask you to keep secrets, it’s not right, and you’re supposed to tell Dad or Mrs. McCall or a teacher.”

Stiles exhales. Yeah, Dad is the sheriff. He knows all about the secrets some adults ask kids to keep. Secrets are bad. Surprises—like Stiles’s thirteenth birthday party—are okay. Stella hadn’t known that at the time, and tearfully spilled the beans at breakfast the week beforehand. In the Stilinski household there is now a firm line drawn between secrets and surprises.

“That’s true,” he says.

“You’re almost a grownup,” she says, twisting around to face him. “And you want me to keep a secret.”

Sometimes Stiles wonders if she even knows how much she can punch him in the gut with just a look.

“Most grownups don’t know about werewolves,” Stiles says, working the comb carefully through her hair. “It would be very dangerous for werewolves if they found out. People might try to hurt them.”

People already have. The Hales are a testament to that.

Stella makes a small noise. “Is that why that boy was bleeding?”

“Yeah.” Stiles thinks of Derek’s bloodstained shirt, pulled tight across his abdomen, the tears in the fabric revealing an expanse of already-healed skin. A part of him also registers some amusement at hearing anyone refer to Derek Hale as a boy, instead of the chiselled-from-marble specimen of manhood that he is. But the less said about that, and the uncomfortable levels of arousal he feels whenever Derek is in his vicinity, the better. “There are people who hurt werewolves. Hunters. So that’s why we keep them a secret.”

“Oh.” Stella is silent for a moment. “Like how if you know who a superhero is, you can’t tell anyone.”

“Right.”

“Superheroes aren’t supposed to be real either,” she points out. “Is Batman real?”

“I’m pretty sure Batman’s not real.”

“That makes sense,” Stella decides. “If he was real and trying to be a secret, anyone who reads the comics would know he’s Bruce Wayne.”

“That is a good point.”

Stella tilts her head. “I won’t tell anyone about werewolves then.”

“Good. That’s good. It’s really important that nobody finds out.” Stiles pauses for a moment, and hooks an arm around her for a quick hug. Then he finishes combing through her hair, and plaits it into a loose braid. Stella holds up her hand and he tugs the hair elastic off her wrist to finish up. “There. All done. Did you brush your teeth?”

“Yep!”

Stiles pushes her away gently and stands up so that she can climb under her comforter. “Are we reading more _Matilda_ tonight?”

Her dark eyes light up, so Stiles picks up the book from her nightstand and settles in to read.

 

***

 

Stella’s bedtime is eight, so once she’s in bed Stiles heads downstairs to grab a snack. Then, a can of Pringles wedged under his arm, he goes back upstairs to his room to work on his homework. Homework and babysitting. That’s his life. And to think Stiles had started this year with a plan to become popular! The allowance his dad pays him puts gas in his Jeep, which is great, but also, now he has nowhere to go. He likes to think that if he didn’t have to spend so much time looking after Stella that he’d have a bunch of awesome parties to go to, but who is he kidding? He’s not that popular, and nobody wants to invite the Sheriff’s kid to the fun parties anyway.

Homework and babysitting and werewolves.

Jesus. His eight-year-old sister knows about werewolves, and Stiles has no idea what the hell he’s supposed to do about that.

He falls asleep in front of his laptop and his half-finished English paper.

 


	2. Chapter 2

The next afternoon Derek is lurking—surprise!—at the edge of the lacrosse field as Stiles pants and wheezes through practice. He honestly doesn’t know why he’s still on the team, but getting a straight answer out of Coach is like trying to herd cats and push water uphill at the same time, so he’s quit asking. He lags behind once practice is done, tugging on Scott’s shirt to signal imminent Secret Werewolf Business and to get him to stay back too.

They linger on the field, tossing passes back and forth, until it empties of Coach and their teammates and Derek approaches. Greenberg turns back to look at them at he reaches the edge of the field, and then nopes the hell out of there. Given how much Derek looks like a shady drug dealer, it’s probably a smart decision.

Really, Derek is about as subtle as a brick.

Stiles rolls his shoulders, sweats unattractively, and waits for Derek to open his mouth and ruin his day.

“I didn’t know you had a little sister,” he says, his eyebrows doing something complicated, and that’s not at all what Stiles was expecting him to open with.

He exchanges a glance with Scott. “Well, I do. Had her for eight years now. It’s too late to return her. I don’t think Dad even kept the receipt.”

Derek’s eyebrows judge him harshly for his frivolity. “It’s dangerous for her to know about werewolves.”

“Dude!” Scott exclaims. “Stella knows?”

“Not about you,” Stiles assures him. He jabs an accusatory finger in Derek’s direction. “She knows about Derek because he climbed in my window the other night all growly and fangy and exposed himself to my eight-year-old sister!” His brain catches up with his mouth. “Wait, that sounds really wrong. He exposed his _secret_ to my eight-year-old sister.”

“Dude,” Scott says again, and this time his tone is full of disapproval and it’s directed entirely at Derek. Being judged by Scott is about as effective as being judged by a fluffy kitten, but Stiles appreciates it all the same.

It’s hard for Stiles to actually remember the gut-wrenching terror he felt during Scott’s first full moon as a werewolf. Scott wouldn’t hurt a fly—except for when there’s a ravenous beast inside him trying to get him to kill his BFF. Stiles is developing some hardcore cognitive dissonance as a coping strategy, and it seems to be working well.

Derek, of course, could appear threatening and murderous if he was surrounded by sunshine and rainbows and frolicking bunnies. It’s mostly the eyebrows, honestly. Definitely ninety, ninety-five percent eyebrow work. They’re like amplifiers for his death stare and they’re incredibly effective. Stiles can feel his testicles attempting to crawl back inside his body right now.

“You need to _fix_ this,” Derek says, his voice low.

“Fucking excuse me?” Stiles might be totally intimidated right now, but that doesn’t make him an idiot. “I can’t make her _unknow_ something, Derek. It’s too late for that. The barn door’s open, and the horse has been gone for so long it’s died of old age!”

A rumbling sound comes out of Derek, and oh, it’s a growl.

Stiles takes a step back. “She’s _eight_. Dude, she still thinks Santa’s real, although she’s starting to get suspicious on that front. Nobody’s going to believe an eight-year-old who says werewolves are real.”

“It’s not the people who won’t believe her I’m worried about,” Derek says ominously. Everything Derek says is ominous though. “It’s the ones who _will_.”

“She’s eight,” Stiles says again, hoping that maybe Derek will actually get it through his thick skull this time.

“It’s dangerous,” Derek repeats, like he’s thinking the exact same thing, and then he abruptly turns and walks away.

Stiles releases a breath he didn’t even know he was holding.

“What the hell is his problem?” Scott asks, shaking his head.

Stiles watches the spot where Derek’s vanished into the trees. “Fuck that guy. Seriously, fuck him. This is his fault, and he knows it.” He shakes off his disquiet. “Hey, do you want to hang out at my place tonight?”

“Can’t,” Scott says, and has the decency to look a little torn about it. “I’m having dinner with Allison and her parents.”

Stiles throws him a look. Derek might be a dick, but he really does have a point about how Scott should be staying away from the Argents. Stiles is a sixteen-year-old virgin and he’s incredibly eager to _not_  be a sixteen-year-old virgin, but is sex really so fucking amazing that it’s worth risking your life for?

Like, Jesus, he hopes so.

But also, no. No, it really isn’t.

“Okay,” he says, because he’s really not in the mood to hear about how incredible Allison is, and the myriad of ways that she completes Scott. “Raincheck?”

Scott grins and slaps him on the back. “Yeah. Raincheck.”

 

***

 

Stella is full of beans when Stiles picks her up from after school care. She swings her backpack into the Jeep like she’s batting for the Mets, and clambers in after it.

“Steven Foster ate a whole pack of Oreos at recess, and then threw up all over his desk when we went back in to class!”

 “Gross,” Stiles says. Fast times at Beacon Hills Elementary. “Also, Dad called. He had to go into work early, so you know what that means for us?”

Stella fist bumps him. “Baskin Robbins!”

Stiles tries to shake off his guilt as they head for the mall. There’s an alpha in town on a murder spree, apparently, and Dad and his deputies are working hard trying to solve something they’ve got no hope of solving unless they take into account that werewolves exist. And really, they’re hardly going to make that leap, are they?

Not everyone is as intuitive as Stiles.

Also, he might have taken too much Adderall the day he put the pieces together on the werewolf thing.

The point is, Dad is working hard trying to solve a mystery that Stiles is actively trying to keep a secret from him, and he feels like shit for it. Stiles has seen Laura Hale’s body though, okay? Dad has a dangerous enough job without some crazy alpha werewolf setting his sights on him.

Stiles might be a natural liar, but that’s supposed to be about stuff that doesn’t matter, like homework, and curfews, and shit like that. It’s not supposed to be about stuff that actually counts. Guilt twists in his gut, and even his Two-Scoop Sundae (with chocolate and mint) doesn’t make him feel much better.

He and Stella eat their sundaes, and then wander around the mall for a while. Stella always likes to visit the toy department at Macy’s, so they check out the stuffed animals and the Lego. On their way out Stiles catches sight of beautiful, glorious Lydia Martin at the perfume counter. For a moment he thinks she’s going to notice him too, but her gaze slides right off him as she turns around again, and yep, of course, Stiles is invisible.

He’s been crushing on Lydia since the third grade.

Why wouldn’t he? She’s perfection. She’s the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen in his life, and he has a five-year plan to win her heart, and all her others parts too. The cornerstone of his plan is getting her to notice him, which is not going very well and has admittedly been the downfall of all his previous plans.

“Stiles,” Stella says, and tugs on his hand. “Stiles?”

“Huh?” He looks down to find her glaring up at him.

“I said can we get sushi for dinner?”

Right. Stiles has a habit of zoning out when Lydia is in his vicinity. He should investigate that now he knows this supernatural shit is real. She’s probably a siren or something.

Can she sing? Stiles isn’t sure, but he would bet his life that she an incredible singer. Because Lydia is incredible at everything.

“Stiles!” Stella exclaims, and he jolts.

“Yes,” he says, dragging his brain back on track. “Let’s get some sushi for dinner.”

 

***

 

There’s a queue at the sushi place, and it’s getting on to dusk when they’re finally heading home. Stella is holding the boxes of sushi carefully in her lap like she’s cradling some fragile infant made entirely of glass, and Stiles is singing along to the radio as they take a detour down old Telegraph Road—a trick Stiles uses to avoid the traffic lights on the main road a few blocks over. Telegraph Road hugs the edge of the Preserve. There are a few houses out here, but it’s pretty quiet and there’s very little traffic. Sometimes they see wildlife at the side of the road, so Stiles always keeps to the speed limit. Also, Dad would kick his ass if he was ever caught speeding, especially with Stella in the Jeep.

Stiles flicks the headlights on—better safe than sorry—as he steers the Jeep around a curve in the road, and then—

“Stiles!” Stella shrieks.

—a man is stumbling onto the road.

Stiles slams on the brakes, wincing as the guy—

_Leather jacket._

_Glower._

_Jaw line you could cut your tongue on._

_It’s_ Derek _._

_Oh, shit, I just ran over Derek Hale!_

—bounces against the fender and staggers back again.

“You hit someone!” Stella screams, sushi boxes flying. “You hit someone!”

“Stella, it’s okay!” Stiles unpeels his shaking fingers from the steering wheel. “It’s okay!”

Derek lurches up to the passenger window, and wrenches the door open and Stella screams again.

“You’re scaring her!” Stiles yells at him, and Derek lurches back, eyes wide. “Stella, it’s okay. He’s okay. He’s…”

Derek’s really not okay. He’s pale, and there’s a sickly blueish cast to his features, and he’s clutching his arm tightly. Black blood is seeping through his fingers.

“Derek, are you okay?”

“Hunter,” Derek grinds out. “She shot me.”

“She?” Stiles asks.

“Kate Argent.”

“Do you need a ride to the hospital?” Stiles asks, figuring that he ran into the guy so it’s literally the least he can do.

“No,” Derek says, and then glowers. “Yes.”

“Stella, get in the back,” Stiles says, unclipping her seatbelt for her. She scrambles through the gap between the front seats, squishing pieces of sushi all over the upholstery, which is gross, but probably no grosser than whatever weird black goo Derek is bringing to the table as he climbs into the front seat.

“I need you to take me to Deaton’s,” Derek says. And then, “Where’s Scott?”

“He’s um, having dinner with the Argents tonight,” Stiles says.

“Is Kate there?”

Stiles thinks that’s Allison’s aunt or something. “Um, probably?”

Stella sticks her head between the seats. “Why is your blood black?”

That is actually a fine question.

“What is that?” Stiles asks. “Is that contagious? You know, you should probably just get out.”

“Call Scott,” Derek instructs tersely. “I need him to go through Kate’s stuff and find out what kind of wolfsbane she uses in her bullets.”

“Why?” Stiles asks, before Stella can. If Derek is going to be pissed—and Derek is _always_  pissed—then better he directs it at him than at Stella.

“Because I’ve been _poisoned_ ,” Derek says through clenched teeth.

“Oh,” says Stiles.

Derek leads a very complicated life. There is a lot going on with him.

“Like, one day you’re really going to have to sit down and explain all of this, you know?” Stiles asks him. “Because you just keep turning up when you’re already in trouble, and it’s incredibly disconcerting, and not at all helpful.”

“Stiles,” Derek says, like he’s only just resisting the urge to strangle him. Stiles gets that a lot, and from a very wide variety of people. “Take me to Deaton’s.”

Stiles doesn’t appreciate his tone. “I don't think you should be barking orders with the way you look, okay? In fact, I think if I wanted to, I could probably drag your little werewolf ass out into the middle of the road and leave you for dead.”

Derek shows his teeth. “Stiles. Start the car.   _Now_. Or I will rip your throat out with my teeth.”

 _Rude_ , Stiles thinks, but turns the key in the ignition.

And then, like a little echo, Stella says, clear as a bell from the backseat: “Wow.  _Rude_.”

Stiles isn’t quite brave enough to turn and see the look on Derek’s face.

He heads to Deaton’s.


	3. Chapter 3

Stiles winces as Derek snaps the handle on the back door of Deaton’s practice.

“Did he just break—” Stella begins, holding Stiles’s hand tightly. “Oh, and now he’s entering!”

Stiles has no idea where she gets her sass from. No idea at all.

They follow Derek inside.

“So, is there like a cure or something in here?” Stiles asks. He sent Scott some texts about getting the bullet and stuff, but the increasingly panicked responses he got back on the drive over here make him think that Scott is currently being cross-examined by the Argents, and probably has no hope of coming through for them. Which is understandable. Stiles has met Chris Argent. He’d thought he was the terrifying parent, right up until he’d met Allison’s mom. Jesus.

Derek doesn’t answer. He just lurches further into the building, bouncing off a wall on his way.

Shit.

Stiles fishes around in his pocket with his spare hand and calls Scott. It goes to messages. “Scott. We really need that bullet, buddy. Derek is not looking good.”

He follows Derek into the operating room, Stella at his side.

His phone rings. “It’s Scott.”

Derek grabs the phone from him. “Did you find it?” Stiles doesn’t hear Scott's response, but Derek’s expression hardens. “Look, if you don’t find it, I’m dead, alright?” A pause while Scott answers. “Then think about this. The Alpha called you out against your will. He’s gonna do it again. Next time you either kill with him, or you get killed. So if you wanna stay alive, then you need me. Find the bullet.”

He shoves the phone back at Stiles, and Stiles looks at the screen to see that he’d ended the call.

Derek stalks to the other side of the room and starts rattling around in the cabinets.

“Stiles,” Stella whispers in that too-loud way that all kids do. “What’s an Alpha?”

“Just…” Stiles swallows. “Just go wait by the door, okay?”

His worlds are colliding, and he can’t deal with Derek and Stella at the same time. Stella isn’t even supposed to know anything about this werewolf stuff, and now she’s right into the middle of it.

“You should phone Mrs. McCall,” she says, her eyes wide. “She’s a nurse!”

Stiles rubs a hand over his head. “It’s not… People medicine doesn’t work on werewolves.”

“Does dog medicine?” Stella asks.

Stiles tenses, waiting for Derek to roar at her for that, but he doesn’t. When Stiles looks at him he finds him looking back. The expression on his face is hollow, almost vulnerable, and Stiles has no idea what to make of it. Then Derek turns around again and keeps rummaging through Deaton’s stuff.

“No,” Stiles says, swallowing “I don’t think so.”

Derek turns on the water in the sink and cups his hands to drink. They’re shaking, and Stiles really doesn’t like Derek Hale very much, but it turns out he wouldn’t wish wolfsbane poisoning on his worst enemy.

And then Stella vanishes into the corridor, and comes back a moment later with a coffee mug. She crosses the floor to Derek, and holds the mug under the tap for him. She half fills it with water, and presses it into his trembling hands. “Dad says when you’re sick, you have to drink lots.”

Derek takes a sip and then sets the mug down again. “Thank you.”

It might be the first time Stiles has heard him say those words, and it makes something tighten in his chest.

“Dad says you have to drink water, but sometimes Stiles lets me have orange Gatorade,” Stella tells him. “That’s the best sort.”

“Yeah,” Derek agrees, his voice faint. He sinks to the floor then, drawing his legs up, and Stiles figures that the only thing they can do now is to wait for Scott to get back to them.

 

***

 

Stiles hates waiting. Stella is much better at it, but she doesn’t have ADHD. They lean against the wall, and watch Derek as he sits there, and Stiles shifts his weight from foot to foot and wonders what the fuck Scott is doing. How long does it take to go through the belongings of a family of trained killers?

Okay, when he puts it like that, he can accept that it’s probably not exactly a walk in the park. But at least Scott doesn’t have to stand here and watch Derek get progressively closer to death. The pallor to his face is definitely more gray than blueish now, and Stiles doesn’t like the look of it at all.

When his phone buzzes with an incoming text, Stiles almost drops it in his rush to unlock the screen. He reads what Scott sent him and then says, “Does Northern blue monkshood mean anything to you?”

If he wasn’t looking right at Derek’s face when he asked, he might have missed the flash of emotion in Derek’s eyes and the shadow flickering across his expression. It’s not fear. It’s resignation.

It’s gone again in a second, and Derek’s scowl is back.

“It’s a rare form of wolfsbane.” Derek’s tone is curt and clipped, like he’s not literally dying on the inside. “He has to bring me the bullet.”

Stiles texts Scott the happy news.

 

***

 

Things go downhill very quickly. Derek’s trembling turns into full body shudders, and the tendons in his neck all cord and strain as he grimaces whenever a new wave of pain hits him. Stiles oscillates between panicking about that and panicking about Stella seeing that, and if Derek’s going to die, can’t he go and do it somewhere else?

Stiles stands in front of Stella when Derek stumbles to his feet at last.

He lurches over to a cabinet, opens it, and then grabs something and thrusts it at Stiles.

 “Is that—” Stiles blinks. “Is that a bone saw?”

“Yes,” Derek says through clenched teeth. “Take it.”

“I really don’t think I want to,” Stiles says, but it’s either take it wear it apparently, so he grabs it before Derek can impale him with it.

Derek strips off his leather jacket, and then his shirt.

“Holy shit,” Stiles says, and not because of his abs. Because of the bullet hole in his arm, and the black veins spider-webbing out from it like cracks in a windshield.

Derek grunts at him, and rattles through Deaton’s things for a moment longer. He eventually produces a length of thin cord, which he wraps around his upper arm and tightens with his teeth like he’s a junkie getting ready to shoot up. “Scott’s not going to make it in time,” he says, the cord clenched between his teeth. “I need you to cut it off before the poison reaches my heart.”

“Cut…” Stiles blinks at Derek, blinks are the bone saw, and then blinks at Derek again. “Your _arm_? Oh, my God. That’s why you got me to bring you here. What if you bleed to death?”

Derek releases the cord, and pulls himself up onto the operating table. “It’ll heal if it works.”

“Ugh.” Stiles stomach registers its disapproval of this plan by trying to force it’s way up his throat and choke his brain. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

Derek glares at him. “Why not?”

Stiles gapes. “Well, because of the cutting through the flesh, the sawing of bone, and especially the blood!”

There’s a hint of a sneer on Derek’s sweaty face. “You faint at the sight of blood?”

“No!” Stiles waves the bone saw at him with more bravado then he feels. “But I might at the sight of a chopped-off _arm_!”

And then Derek growls and there are threats, and black bile dribbling down Derek’s chin , and Stella’s pale, terrified face in Stiles’s periphery, and Stiles can’t do this. He can’t. He can’t cut Derek’s arm off in front of his little sister. He’s pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to do it even if she wasn’t here, but she _is_ , and Stiles is not going to force her to take a front seat in the latest offering from the _Saw_  franchise, okay? Stella is _here_ , and it’s not a question of what Stiles can’t do, it’s a question of what he can’t do in front of her. And he’s sorry. He’s sorry, Derek, but no.

“Stiles,” Stella says, and Stiles realises exactly how much of that rambling, frantic inner turmoil has spilled out in words. “Don’t be scared.”

Don’t be… he chokes back a near-hysterical laugh.

Stella reaches for his free hand. “Is Derek going to die if you don’t do it?”

Stiles holds Stella’s gaze, and wonders which scenario here will make him look the least monstrous in her eyes.

He lifts the bone saw.

Oh god.

He’s really going to do this, isn’t he?

He can’t just let Derek die.

He’s going to do it.

And then Scott bursts through the door with the bullet and Stiles almost collapses with relief.

 

***

 

 “Where does Derek live?” Stella asks later as Stiles makes her scrambled eggs for dinner. The sushi, he’ll scrape out of the Jeep once Stella’s in bed.

“At his house,” Stiles says, and doesn’t tell her it’s a burned-out husk in the Preserve. He really doesn’t want to talk about Derek right now, but he knows better than to try to get Stella to drop a subject. She’s as stubborn as he is.

“Will his dad look after him tonight?” she asks.

Stiles stares hard at the eggs in the pan. “He doesn’t have a dad anymore.”

“Oh,” Stella says. “His mom then?”

“Derek’s a grownup,” Stiles says, and hates himself for misleading her with that answer. “Go and pour a juice. The eggs are almost done.”

Stella goes to the refrigerator. “Why did Scott go with Derek?”

The answer—werewolf stuff—is on the tip of Stiles’s tongue, but he bites it back. “I don’t know. I’ll ask him tomorrow.”

Stella appears at his elbow, a glass of juice in her hand. “What’s an Alpha and why does it want Scott to kill people? Is Scott a werewolf too?”

Jesus. Stiles slips and his hand hits the edge of the pan. He swears, and pivots for the sink. He holds his hand under the cold water to soothe the burn. “You don’t miss a trick, do you?”

“Nope,” she agrees. “Is your hand okay?”  

“I think so.” Stiles pulls his hand out from under the water, inspects it, and figures he doesn’t need any burn cream. The eggs might, though. They’re literally smoking.   _Shit_. He dives for the pan and takes it off the heat before he burns the house down. He pokes at them with a fork, and wonders if they’re salvageable.

The doorbell rings.

“I’ll get it!” Stella says, and dashes away.

By the time Stiles sets the pan in the sink so he doesn’t set fire to anything else and heads down the hall to see who it is, the door is already closed and Stella is on her way back to the kitchen. She’s holding two boxes from the sushi place and, balanced precariously on top of them, two orange Gatorades.

“Derek says thank you,” she announces, like those words twice in one day aren’t totally unprecedented and possibly a sign of the apocalypse. She sets everything down very carefully on the kitchen table, catching a bottle as it rolls toward the edge, and then flashes a grin at Stiles. “I hope he got us California rolls!”

Stiles reaches for the other bottle of orange Gatorade.

Weird day.

Really weird day.

But it turns out Derek did get California rolls—and half the rest of the menu—so on balance Stiles is going to chalk the day up as a success.

He’s rapidly learning that when it comes to werewolves in general and Derek Hale in particular, it’s important to count the small victories.


	4. Chapter 4

This Alpha werewolf business is getting way too serious. When Stiles arrives at school the next morning, it’s to discover that the reason Dad hasn’t been home all night—his text messages did not share any of the gruesome details—was because some guy at the video store was literally ripped apart last night. Why are video stores still a thing, first of all? And secondly, why were Jackson and Lydia there trying to rent a copy of _The Notebook_? Wouldn’t it make more sense just to order the DVD off Amazon, since the word on the street, or on the lacrosse field, is that Lydia makes Jackson watch it at least once a week?

Stiles would like to share this observation with Scott, but Scott has apparently decided to ditch school for the day with Allison. Which is another thing that’s getting way too serious, frankly. Stiles loves Scott like a bro, seriously, but he’s going to end up dead if he keeps trying to hang out in the lion’s den and put his dick inside the lion’s daughter. And no, Stiles has no idea who the lion is in this metaphor—Chris or Victoria are equally terrifying, honestly—and yes, he’s aware of what a disturbing metaphor it is.

Point is, Scott’s adoration of Allison is just another added complication in this whole werewolf mess, but apparently he can’t be talked out of it.

Stiles has tried.

Stiles chews the end of his pen avidly in homeroom, trying to pay attention when his teacher reminds them all that it’s parent teacher night tonight, also known as Stiles’s least favourite event in the academic calendar. It’s not that he’s a bad student or anything—his grades are great—but he feels sorry for his dad, who has to sit through a procession of teachers telling him what he’s already known for years: that Stiles couldn’t focus if his life depended on it. He’s also an inveterate smartass.

Like they think his dad doesn’t know that somehow?

Please. Dad’s been dealing with Stiles for sixteen years. He knows better than anyone.

Anyway, how is Stiles supposed to care about stuff like parent teacher night when there is an Alpha werewolf on the loose?

He chews his pen so hard that he tastes ink, and then spits the bits of plastic out and wipes his mouth frantically with his sleeve to make sure there’s none on his face.

Danny gives him a weird look, but Stiles is used to those. It is literally the least of his problems.

The real problem, of course, is the Alpha werewolf.

Except when Stiles tries to focus on the Alpha, it’s another werewolf he finds himself thinking about. Derek Hale. Derek, who almost died last night—he almost dies a lot of the time, and Stiles is becoming seriously concerned about that—and was a total raging douche about it, but _also_ —and Stiles feels this part is crucial—took the time to replace Stella’s sushi and bring then orange Gatorade.

Like, his angry, growly waters run deep or something.

Stiles thinks that his opinion of Derek is changing because of that tiny gesture last night. Or maybe it’s because he saw Derek’s abs. He doesn’t think he’s that shallow, but he’s sixteen. Sometimes it’s hard to tell when his brain is thinking or it’s off chasing butterflies and his dick has taken over the job.

Also, Stiles isn’t gay, but he is maybe bi? A straight guy probably wouldn’t imagine licking Derek Hale’s abs, right? Although they’d be missing out, Stiles is sure, because they are truly incredible abs. But no, Stiles definitely isn’t totally straight, because he also kind of wants to do things to Derek’s dick. Like lick it. And suck it. And—

“Stiles?” Danny asks, and Stiles looks up to see the classroom is empty. “Are you coming to chemistry?”

He flails to his feet. “What? Yes. I was just resting my eyes.”

“Your eyes were open,” Danny points out.

“It was a metaphor,” Stiles attempts.

“That’s not how metaphors work.”

Stiles shrugs, slings his backpack over his shoulder, and follows Danny out the door.

 

***

 

Stiles and Danny have Chemistry. Literally. And, Stiles wonders, figuratively?

Like, is that a thing that exists in the realm of possibility?

Does Stiles have game?

Clearly not when it comes to Lydia, although to be fair that’s because she is a goddess. But what about with guys? Does Stiles have game when it comes to guys?

Okay, no. Stiles has no game. Zero. Nada. Zilch.

But he’s pretty sure he doesn’t need game if he’s pretty.

Not that any of this is even about Danny, of course. Danny’s too nice. Stiles is thinking of a leather jacket, tight jeans, and a face airbrushed into perfection by genetics and God.

Does Derek think he’s pretty?

“Hey, Danny?” he asks, leaning over. “Hey, Danny, can I ask you a question?”

Danny gives him a long-suffering look, but he doesn’t say no.

Stiles leans over even further. “Am I attractive to gay guys?”

And then he leans too far and falls off his chair before he gets an answer.

 

***

 

Parent teacher night is what it is.  
Scott actually makes an appearance, so it’s great to know that he’s not dead and stuff following his day long radio silence, but Stiles can’t talk to him at all, because Scott’s got Allison hanging off his arm, and Stiles is flanked by Dad and Stella. Stiles tries to communicate with Scott in a series of narrow stares that they really need to get to the bottom of this werewolf stuff before Scott is compelled by the Alpha into becoming a bloodthirsty killing machine and Scott had better call him after parent teacher night before all this spirals entirely out of control, because taking the day off isn’t really the smartest thing to do in the middle of a supernatural crisis, you dumbass, but that’s a lot to try to convey with the power of a glare to a largely unreceptive target.

“So, um, you should come over for a Call of Duty session after this,” Stiles says.

“Oh, no,” Dad tells him. “Don’t you make any plans, Stiles. I know I’m going to find out _something_ tonight that gets you grounded.”

Scott flashes him a sympathetic smile, like he actually thinks this is about video games. “Another time, huh?”

“Yep,” Stiles says, resisting the urge to roll his eyes so hard he can see his brain. “Another time.”

He follows his Dad and Stella down the corridor, then sends Scott a text message that says, simply: _Idiot_.

Stiles sits on a bench outside Finstock’s classroom with Stella, while Dad presumably gets the full Finstock experience. Stiles hopes it includes the speech from Independence Day.

Stella eats the rice crackers Dad packed for her to get her through the evening, and fills Stiles in on her day at school. Highlights include Brian Cassidy falling off the slide, Stella signing up for a new Reading in the Community program her teacher has initiated, and Faith Johansen inviting Stella to her birthday party sleepover in a few weeks. There will apparently be two different kinds of cake.

“Who gets two birthday cakes?” Stiles asks.

“Faith and her twin brother,” Stella says. “Duh.”

Well, that makes sense, Stiles figures, and leans back against the wall to wait for Dad.

“You wrote your essay on circumcision, kid?” Dad asks when he reappears. “ _Really_?”

Stiles isn’t sure what it says about him when Dad can spend ten minutes with Finstock and come out thinking Stiles is the weird one, but it’s probably not anything to be proud of.

“What’s circumcision?” Stella asks loudly, and the freshman and his mom waiting on the bench beside them look horrified.

Dad sighs, and looks at his sheet of paper. “Who’s next?”

Stiles dies on the inside.

Because Harris is next. And Harris hates him.

This night just got worse.

 

***

 

They’re walking through the parking lot on their way back to Dad’s car when Stiles hears the screaming.

 _The Alpha_ , his stuttering heartbeat tells him.

“Wait here,” Dad says, his voice suddenly tight. “Wait here.”

“Dad,” Stiles says, gripping Stella’s hand tightly.

“Wait here!”

And suddenly Dad’s gone, and it’s chaos, with people rushing through the parking lot, and car tires screeching, and Stiles lifts Stella up onto the hood of the car they’re closest to just to keep her off the ground, and then—

A dull thud.

“Dad!” Stiles yells, pushing his way through a knot of people. “Dad!”

“I’m okay!” Dad says, climbing to his feet. “I’m okay!”

But he’s wincing, and his uniform pants are stained with blood below the knee. The driver of the car that hit him is still sitting in the driver’s seat, hands white-knuckled around the wheel.

“Stiles, where’s Stella?” Dad asks. “Get Stella and get—”

And then Stiles hears the roar, and his blood runs cold.

He turns, heading back for Stella. He can see her standing on top of the hood of the car. She’s craning her head to look at something and then, as Stiles watches, she turns and scrambles up the windshield onto the roof of the car, and god, it’s close… the Alpha is close.

Stiles dodges through the cars, his heart in his mouth.

A shot rings out.

Stiles skids to a halt just in time to see Chris Argent, Allison’s dad, holstering his firearm. He’s standing between Stella and…

Stiles turns his head to look.

A mountain lion?

Seriously?

A fucking _mountain lion_?

“A mountain lion?” he blurts aloud.

Chris Argent shows him a narrow stare. “Expecting something else?”

“No,” Stiles says, his heart hammering. “Nope. Not at all.”

Chris Argent looks him up and down, nods, and then goes to inspect his kill.

Stella slides back down the windshield of the car, her shoes squeaking on the glass, and into Stiles’s arms.

 

***

 

“You thought it was a werewolf, didn’t you?” Stella asks later that night when Dad—his grazes patched up—has gone in to work and Stiles and Stella are eating cereal in front of the television. “The bad one? The Alpha?”

“I thought it was.” Stiles closes his eyes briefly. “How messed up is it when it turns out a vicious mountain lion is the _better_  option?”

“Pretty messed up,” Stella agrees. She falls silent for a while, chewing her bottom lip. “Stiles?”

“Mmm?”

“Is Dad really okay?”

“Yeah.” Stiles nudges her with his shoulder, careful not to make it too hard so they don’t both end up wearing her bowl of cereal. “He’s fine.”

Stella hits him with a wide-eyed gaze that doesn’t allow him anywhere to hide. “What would happen if he wasn’t?”

That old, pervasive fear rises up in Stiles again. It’s been there ever since Mom died.

“I’d look after you,” he says.

“You’re not a grown-up,” she tells him. “Not _really_.”

“No, but I’d look after you,” Stiles says. “Dad has cousins in Portland. We’ve met them before, but you were probably too little to remember. If something bad happened to Dad, we’d go and live with them until I’m eighteen, then I’d look after you.”

Their mom’s death, and the realities of their dad’s job. It’s something that Stiles has thought about, and that Dad has planned for, if worst comes to worst.

“Okay,” Stella says, and nods seriously. “As long as we’d be together.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says, and thinks of Laura Hale. Thinks of Derek, who is all alone in the world now. Thinks of how he’s lost everyone. Stiles’s chest aches, and he wonders how Derek is even still standing. Stiles wouldn’t be. Not after that. Losing his mom fractured a part of him that will never really heal, but to lose Dad on top of that? To lose _Stella_? Even the thought of it makes panic spike sharply in his gut. “Yeah, we’d be together.”

He blinks, his eyes stinging, and wonders how Derek is even still here.


	5. Chapter 5

Stiles finds himself thinking about Derek Hale more than he should, if only for the sake of his own sanity. In the three days since the incident at Deaton’s clinic with the bone saw, Stiles hasn’t seen hide nor hair—pun absolutely intended—of his unfriendly neighbourhood werewolf. And as much as Stiles attempts to stay ambivalent about Derek Hale, he can’t quite manage it. He’s worried, okay? What if the Alpha’s killed him? What if the Argents have? Would anyone even notice he was gone except for Stiles? And that’s not Stiles trying to insert himself into Derek’s life or anything, or make himself a part of Derek’s story—it’s like a legitimate fucking judgement call on how depressing Derek’s existence is if Stiles Stilinski is the only person who’s thinking about him.

Well, almost the only person.

Stiles doesn’t miss the way that Stella scans the roadside when Stiles is driving, like she’s hoping Derek will just stumble out in front of the Jeep and into their lives again.

And, as much as Stiles doesn’t need the complication in his life, maybe a part of him is hoping it too.

It doesn’t happen.

Days pass.

Dad is back on day shifts now, so that means a return to family breakfasts and dinners. Stiles likes it when Dad’s on days. Sometimes it feels like they communicate entirely with text messages and notes stuck on the refrigerator, or the faint Morse Code of Dad’s footsteps creaking on the stairs when he’s leaving for work late at night, or coming home again just before dawn. It’s weird, Stiles thinks, to miss someone you share a house with.

Stella, of course, makes up for lost time by filling Dad in on every single thing he’s missed while he’s been on graveyard shifts.

“And,” she says that night at dinner, barely pausing to shovel her mashed potatoes in her mouth, “I’m in the Reading in the Community program!”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Dad chides her gently.

She chews and swallows. “I’m in the Reading in the Community program. It’s only for the best readers. I’m the best reader in our whole class.”

“I’ll bet you are,” Dad says. “What’s the Reading in the Community program?”

“You have to sign a form,” Stella tells him. “We go to the old people’s home and the hospital and we read to people.”

Stiles makes a face. He literally can’t imagine anything worse than being a captive audience to a bunch of little kids stumbling over their words. 

Dad gives him a look that says, _Son, you’re right, but keep your mouth zipped._

Stiles gets that look a lot from Dad, actually.

“I’m going to read _Matilda_ ,” Stella says. “So you need to sign the form. Oh, and I need to buy a birthday present for Faith, because I’m going to her birthday sleepover soon. I need money for two presents.”

“Who gets _two_ birthday presents?” Dad asks, his forehead creasing.

“Faith and her twin brother,” Stella says. “Duh.”

Stiles snorts at the look on Dad’s face.

“Makes sense,” Dad says, and then he grins and says, teasingly, “So, has Stiles been letting any more werewolves in the house?”

Stiles freezes.

Seriously? What is his life, even?

“No!” Stella exclaims, wide-eyed, and then clamps her mouth shut.

Dad throws a questioning look at Stiles, like he’s wondering why Stella’s not playing along.

Stiles answers with a shrug.

_Little kids, right, Dad? Weird._

“So,” Stiles says, anxious to change the subject, “I got a B on yesterday’s chemistry pop quiz.”

Dad raises his eyebrows. “Good job, kiddo.”

“It would have been an A, except Harris said some of my answers were illegible,” Stiles says. “Which is bullsh— _bullcrap_ , by the way!”

“Stiles,” Dad says with a sigh. “Language.”

“I saved it!” Stiles insists.

“You were going to say bullshit,” Stella tells him, and then turns to Dad. “It’s not rude if I’m not using it as a swear! I’m just saying what he was going to say.”

“It’s still a swear,” Dad says, shaking his head. “You two. Jesus.”

“And that’s a blasphemy,” Stiles says smugly.

Dad snorts. “Yeah, well, we don’t have a blasphemy jar.”

“Maybe we should,” Stiles says, poking his fork towards Dad. “You’d owe it twenty bucks in a week!”

“Which is why we don’t have a blasphemy jar,” Dad tells him. “Now, hurry up and finish your dinner, both of you. I saw that ice cream in the freezer, and it’s got my name on it.”

Stella gasps, and shovels her mashed potatoes in like it’s a race. Stiles wishes he could say that he finishes his meal much more slowly, but who is he kidding? There’s ice cream on the line.

 

 

***

 

Stiles wakes up with a start as his window screeches open and a dark shape steps inside.

“Derek?” he asks, his voice scratchy with sleep.

A grunt is his only answer, and probably the only one he needs. A home invader would be more forthcoming, right?

Stiles throws his comforter back and rolls out of bed, ending up more or less on his feet. He squints at the Derek-shaped form by the window. “My dad’s home.”

“I know.” Derek is as loquacious as always, his voice pinched with customary tension.

“Okay…” Stiles scrubs his fingers through his hair, and squints again. Then, since his zoom function is clearly broken, he shuffles forward in an attempt to bring Derek into focus instead. “What do you want?”

“I,” Derek begins, and then just stops. And stays stopped.

Stiles takes another step forward. Derek is a silhouette in the moonlight. “What’s going on?”

He’s close enough to touch, so of course Derek takes a step sideways. He hip-checks Stiles’s desk, bumping it hard enough that Stiles’s computer monitor blinks into life, bathing the room in a light blue glow.

Derek’s holding a hand against his abdomen. There’s a black stain spreading from underneath his palm, like ink in blotting paper.

Stiles’ s heart stumbles over a beat. “What _happened_? Did you get shot again?”

“Stabbed,” Derek mutters.

“Oh, mixing it up. That’s good.” Stiles fights not to laugh at the ludicrous tragedy of Derek’s existence. “Do you need like special wolfsbane or something?”

“No.” Such a short, curt word, but it sounds somehow soft. It sounds like the loneliest word in the universe. “It’s healing.”

Stiles lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“They’re looking for me.” Derek says. “Hunters. I couldn’t go back to my house.”

“Okay,” Stiles says. What is Derek’s life that Stiles’s house is his only port in a storm? His chest aches just thinking about it, and he swallows. “I mean, I’d say you could have a shower, but that might wake Dad. I’ll go get you a washcloth, okay? And you can grab a clean shirt or something. Just wait here.”

“Okay,” Derek says softly as Stiles shuffles toward the door. And then, so quietly that Stiles barely even hears him: “Thank you.”

It makes his stomach twist.

 

***

 

Stiles wakes up when the alarm on his phone goes off. He rolls over onto his side so that he can reach his bedside table. He fumbles for his phone and shuts the alarm off just as Dad knocks on the door. Then his gaze drops to the floor, and to where Derek Hale is lying there, staring at him.

“Kiddo?” Dad calls. “Breakfast!” 

“Don’t come in here!” Stiles yells back. “I’m, um—I’m—I’m jerking off!”

And realizes, a second too late, what words just fell out of him. He freezes, and drops his phone with a dull thunk onto Derek’s face. 

 _What the_ fuck _?_ Derek mouths at him, and Stiles doesn’t think it’s for the phone.

“Too much information, Stiles,” Dad says in a long-suffering tone from outside the door, and then his footsteps tread down the hall.

Stiles reaches down very slowly to reclaim his phone from where it’s ended up beside Derek’s head. Derek expression grows impossibly sour when Stiles’s fingers brush his jaw.

“What?” Stiles whispers down at him. “You know I wasn’t! These fingers are clean, dude. You’re not going to get Stiles cooties!”

Derek glares at him.

Stiles retrieves his phone. “Anyway, Dad will be going to work soon, so if you want to hang around for breakfast you can or whatever.”

Derek’s expressions softens into something slightly less than glacial.

Stiles takes that as a yes.

“Okay,” he says, not thinking about Derek thinking about him jerking off. Definitely not. Because that would be awkward. “Breakfast.”

Stiles rolls out of bed—the non-Derek side—and closes his door when he leaves his room. Downstairs, Dad is finishing off his coffee while he tries to tame Stella’s hair into a braid. There’s a half-eaten piece of toast on his plate, and Stiles reaches for it only to get his hand slapped away.

“Wash your hands before you eat,” Dad tells him.

Stiles’s face burns. “Oh. Right.”

“Are you good to get Stella to school?”

“Yup,” Stiles says, crossing to the sink and grabbing the hand soap. “And good to pick her up too.”

“Okay.” Dad finishes off Stella’s braid. It’s a little lopsided, but he was mostly working one-handed and juggling his coffee at the same time. He stands up, and then bends down to give Stella a kiss on the forehead. “Be good for your brother.”

“I always am,” she lies blatantly.

Dad pulls Stiles into a hug. “And be good to your sister. I’ll be home by five, if nothing comes up, but I’ll text you if anything does.”

“Gotcha,” Stiles say. “We’ll see you then.”

Stiles waits until Dad leaves and he hears the cruiser heading down the street before he turns to Stella. “We need to make some more breakfast.”

Stella stares at the pan of scrambled eggs. “Why?”

“Because I told Derek he could have some.”

“Derek’s here?” Her face lights up like it’s Christmas.

And that must be the signal Derek’s waiting for, because he steps into the kitchen looking almost shy.

“Derek! Stella exclaims, and rushes forward to wrap her arms around him. “You’re here, and you’re not dead!”

Derek looks at Stiles.

“Little sisters, dude,” he says, and shrugs.

“Yeah, I know.” Derek pats Stella gently on the back, and breaks Stiles’s gaze. “I had one.”

Shit. Of course he did. Was it eight people that died in the Hale house fire? Stiles doesn’t really remember. But Cora Hale was in the year above him at school. He remembers dark hair and a glare as intimidating as Derek’s. She was older than him, and a bit scary. Weird to look back now and realise she was just a little girl. Weird to think that’s all she ever got to be.

“So,” Stiles says, pushing the word out, “you like scrambled eggs, right?”

“Yeah.” The side of Derek’s mouth quirks briefly. “I like scrambled eggs.”

 

***

 

The answer, Stiles thinks as he watches Stella shovel more eggs onto Derek’s plate, isn’t to pretend Derek Hale and werewolves don’t exist.

The answer isn’t to sit back and do nothing.

The answer is to _help_ Derek.

Because Stiles is already in danger, isn’t he? The whole town is, including Dad and Stella. And Scott’s already tried hard enough to pretend nothing is happening, and that suddenly being turned into a werewolf is totally not going to change anything, but Scott’s wrong. Scott’s already in danger too.

And so is Derek.

And Derek isn’t someone Stiles can pretend doesn’t matter, or doesn’t exist at all.

Derek is a guy who needs help, and he has nobody else to help him.

He watches as Stella pulls her chair up right next to Derek’s so they can eat together, and sees how Derek makes room for her, his mouth twitching.

He watches as Stella drowns her eggs in ketchup, and Derek wrinkles his nose in disgust.

He watches as Stella laughs and elbows him, and Derek shows her a genuine fucking smile.

He thinks of how he promised Stella someone would always look after her, and wonders if Derek ever heard the same promise from the people who loved him.

A knot tightens in Stiles’s chest.

Yeah.

Derek Hale needs someone, and Stiles guesses he’s just volunteered. 


	6. Chapter 6

The way Stiles figures it, the Alpha is the heart of the problem. As long as the Alpha is out there wanting both Derek and Scott to turn into mindless killing machines, that makes the Argents a problem too. Maybe they’ll back off when the Alpha is out of the picture? Although the amount of times Derek has been shot or stabbed, that’s a big maybe. There’s not a lot of love lost there, clearly. But the Alpha is still the biggest problem. And Stiles has no idea who it is.

He keeps circling back around to Deaton, Scott’s boss at the vet clinic, because Deaton is developing this habit of just kind of being in the vicinity when werewolf shit goes down. And when he talks, he’s always saying more than his words, even if Stiles doesn’t know exactly _what_ he’s saying. He knows something, that’s for sure.

Except…

Except Scott works with Deaton three afternoons a week, and every Saturday. So if Deaton is really the Alpha, why hasn’t he taken the opportunity to get Scott to do his evil bidding or exert his mind control or whatever the fuck it is that Alphas do, when Scott is right there? Deaton is shady as fuck, basically, but him being the Alpha doesn’t quite add up.

Stiles has always loved solving puzzles, but when literally every person in town is a potential suspect? It’s not as easy as Law and Order makes it look, is all he’s saying. Despite his best efforts, Stiles is not going to solve this in forty-five minutes plus ad breaks.

He needs to know more about the Alpha’s victims. The bus driver, and the two guys drinking in the woods… Because if the Alpha is batshit insane, why haven’t there been more killings? Why isn’t he out there in broad daylight tearing people apart?

So maybe there’s a pattern, right?

Maybe there’s an actual motive.

He really needs to get a look at Dad’s reports.

Unfortunately, Dad knows better than to bring that stuff home, and has ever since Stiles was nine, helped himself to some light reading, and then asked Dad over dinner what carnal abuse was.

So now Dad’s files stay at work, and Stiles is pretty sure the laptop he brings home is password protected to NSA levels. Which leaves him with no choice—he needs to get to Dad’s files at the station, and copy them.

Stella, of course, is happy to help. For all that she’s a tattletale whenever Stiles is keeping secrets from her, all he needs to do to buy her undying loyalty is to make her an accomplice.

“You got this, Batgirl?” he asks when they pull up at the Sheriff’s Department.

She gives him the thumbs up. “Got it!”

Nobody has ever accused Stiles of stealthiness, or even subtlety, so lucky he’s got Stella to act as a distraction. She barrels into the station talking a mile a minute—she gets that from him—and straight into the bullpen, where she finds Dad and a few of the deputies, and proceeds to spin a tale about how mean one of the boys was at school today, and how he _pulled her hair_. Her outrage is palpable, and she adds the icing to the cake by announcing, “And Mrs. Svensen, she was the teacher on playground duty, said that he must have done it because he likes me. But I don’t like it when he pulls my hair! It’s not fair!”

Stiles slips away into the file room.

He finds the files on the recent killings, and photographs the pages using his phone. Even the autopsy reports, although they make his stomach churn. He does the same to Laura Hale’s file—stopping once and freezing when he hears footsteps passing—and then, more on instinct than anything else, looks for the file on the Hale house fire.

It’s huge.

Three massive folders stuffed with papers, and there’s no way Stiles will be able to copy it all.

Not in the few minutes he has left, anyway.

He doesn’t allow himself a moment to second-guess what is probably a monumentally stupid thing to do. Just unzips his backpack, shoves the file inside, and zips it up again.

By the time he gets back to the bullpen, Tara is showing Stella how to stomp on a guy’s foot and knee him in the balls in one smooth movement.  

It’s sort of hot, but that’s Tara all over.

“Want to be my guinea pig, Stiles?” she asks him with a smile, fingers hooked into the utility belt hanging off her hips, and Stiles tries very hard not to think about what it would feel like with her hands touching him. Like, he’s pretty sure it’d be worth getting kneed in the balls.

He feels his face burn. “Um… I… um. What?”

“Back to work everyone!” Dad says suddenly, putting a hand on Stiles’s shoulder and steering him firmly away from his humiliating inability to speak in actual sentences right now. “So, what did you two drop in for anyway?”

Stella skips alongside them. “Stiles is taking me to the hospital, but I wanted to see you first.”

“The hospital?”

“My Reading in the Community program!”

“Oh, right,” Dad says. He looks at his watch. “What time does that finish?”

“Five,” Stiles says. Now he’s out of Tara’s sight he can apparently remember how to use his words. “I figured I’d drop her off then go to Scott’s and do some homework before I go back and collect her.”

He’s actually intending to sit in his Jeep in the parking lot and photograph the entire Hale house fire file, but why muddy the waters with truth? Then he can hopefully return it to the station before Dad notices it’s even gone. Not that Dad will notice, right? The Hale house fire was years ago. Why would anyone want to look at the file today suddenly?

Stiles ignores the snarky little voice in his head that reminds him that the obvious connection is Laura Hale, because come on, Dad’s probably already made that connection, and probably already looked over the Hale fire file again recently, and the chances that he needs to do it again in the hour that Stella is at the hospital at miniscule at best, right?

Totally.

This is fine.

Stiles is not going to get busted.

This is fine.

“Sounds good, kid,” Dad says. “I’ll see you both at home for dinner.”

Stiles and Stella escape back into the sunlight.

 

***

 

There are four other little kids waiting at the hospital with their moms when Stiles turns up. It’s always a little awkward. Stiles is pretty bad at mom talk. Usually he just slinks to the edge of a space and plays games on his phone until he can escape, but this is a pretty small crowd and it’s hard to get lost in it. Stiles figures most of Stella’s school friends know her deal, but they don’t necessarily tell their parents, because there’s always at least someone who looks at him like ‘Why is this kid here at this thing?’

And Stiles really doesn’t like explaining his life story to strangers.

He’s saved from having to do it today when Stella’s teacher arrives. “Okay, we’re all here! Let’s go and read. Parents, you can pick your kids up from here at five!”

She saves a special smile for Stiles.

Stiles likes Mrs. Lucas, but it’s weird. She’s middle-aged, and it’s weird that she was actually his teacher in elementary school too, and the one big memory he has of her is the time he had a meltdown in class because his mom was going to _die_ , and she took him outside and hugged him and didn’t even complain that he got snot all over her blouse. It’s awkward because he sometimes wonders if that’s her one prevailing memory of him as well, and he always feels like a little kid playing dress-up when he has to interact with her for Stella’s school stuff as like Dad’s proxy.

He smiles and waves as Mrs. Lucas ushers the kids into the hospital, and then dodges the other parents and hurries back to the parking lot.

He’s got an hour to photograph every page of the Hale house fire.

He sets his alarm on his phone and gets to work.

 

***

 

“I thought you were going home after the hospital,” Dad says when Stiles and Stella turn up at the station again.

Stella bursts into tears.

She’s not pretending this time.

Stiles watches, hollow-eyed, as Dad pulls her into a hug.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Dad says, rubbing her back and looking at Stiles. “It’s okay, baby girl.”

“She got a coma patient,” Stiles says, his throat aching. “Mrs. Lucas said she was fine with it, but then we got to the car and this happened.”

Dad presses his mouth into a thin line for a moment. “Okay. You don’t need to go back next time, Stella.”

She draws back, tear-stained and affronted. “No! I want to!”

“You want to?” Dad asks, brows raising.

“Mrs. McCall says that it’s not like being asleep. He can still hear me read, so I’m going to do it again.” Her grim determination wavers. “It just makes me sad.”

Dad looks at Stiles, helpless.

Stiles shrugs. “I um, I need the bathroom.”

He’s feeling pretty close to a breakdown himself, after skimming through the Hale house fire file. He’d known, in the abstract, how bad it was. He’d even dealt with the autopsy photographs okay, since none of them looked like actual people as long as he didn’t study them too hard. But it was the other photographs that felt like a stab in the guts. Cora Hale’s yearbook photo. Talia and James Hale with their arms around one another, laughing. Patrick Hale in a little league uniform. Eight of them in total. Eight real people whose lives had been cut short in that fire.

That fire that Derek said had been started by hunters.

By the Argents.

Stiles had looked at the file and felt a chill to the core at the thought of that happening to Scott and Melissa. Happening to someone just because there are werewolves in the family.

He shuffles down the corridor toward the bathroom, taking a quick detour to replace the files in the file room.

He thinks of Derek again as he closes the door and makes his escape.

Thinks of everything that he’s lost.

Scrubs at his face before he returns to Dad and Stella, but it’s okay if Dad thinks he’s been crying too. He knows how Stiles feels when Stella gets hurt.

Dad ends up clocking out early from work.

They get pizza for dinner, because nobody feels like cooking.

They eat on the couch, Stella sandwiched in the middle.

Everything feels strange and fragile, like an itch under his skin, and Stiles hates it.

It’s not fair.

Nothing in the world is far.

Later that night when Stella and Dad are both asleep in their rooms, Stiles eases his bedroom window open, grabs the keys to the Jeep, and climbs out into the night.

Because nothing in the world is fair, and Derek shouldn’t be out there alone.


	7. Chapter 7

The last of the streetlights slides in a bright corona up the windshield of the Jeep as Stiles turns onto the road through the Preserve, and then the road is dark and deep, and reminds Stiles of a Robert Frost poem on that alone. The light from the headlights bounces off the potholed asphalt and the trees closest to the road, causing Stiles’s heart to jump whenever he thinks he senses movement, but as far as he can tell it’s only light and shadow and his imagination.

It’s reckless to be doing this, coming out here, with a bloodthirsty Alpha on the loose, but that’s Stiles all over, and it always has been. It’s partly because of his ADHD, he thinks, but there’s no denying he got a healthy streak of it from his Mom too. She didn’t have ADHD but Stiles can remember waking up in the car a bunch of times when he was little, before Stella came along and before Mom got sick, and discovering it wasn’t even dawn yet but they were halfway to the coast so they could have a picnic breakfast on the beach. Every day with her was an adventure. Stiles wonders what the hell she’d make of all this werewolf business. And then he remembers too, with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, how she’d seen monsters towards the end, while her brain withered and died inside her skull.

He wonders if her hallucinations took place on dark roads like this one.

He could be driving into a horror movie right now, he knows, but he’s been out here before in the daylight, and dark is just the absence of light, right? He knows what the Preserve looks like in the day, when the sunlight filters through the trees, and it’s beautiful. But right now, with just a sliver of the moon riding in the sky above the scant clouds, it’s a whole different world.

There was a time when Stiles would have thought that Derek belonged out here in a nightmare world, but he’s seen past the claws and the fangs now, the glower and the growl.

The road curves like it’s following the path of an unknown river as it cuts through the Preserve. Stiles follows the final curve, the shift grinding a little as he drops down a gear into second, and then the road ends at the clearing where the Hale house once stood.

It must have been beautiful, once, but now it’s nothing but a shell. The façade is still there, jutting up into the night sky like a headstone.

And god. Stiles needs to stop jumping straight to the horror movie imagery, in case he turns it into a self fulfilling prophecy. Stiles is the mouthy sidekick in this story. If it’s a horror movie, he knows how it ends for that guy, right?

Stiles pulls to a stop in front of the house, the headlights of the Jeep illuminating the charred, blackened porch. They’re illuminating Derek as well, where he’s standing at the top of the steps, looking at the Jeep. With his werewolf hearing, he probably heard the Jeep’s whining transmission from miles away.

Stiles climbs out of the Jeep, and slams the door shut. His sneakers crunch on dead leaves as he walks toward the porch. “Hey, Derek.”

“What are you doing here?” Derek’s voice is low, his syllables cut off into short, unhappy sounds.

And this is the part that Stiles hasn’t thought through. Because Derek needs his help, and Derek needs to not be alone, but Derek is also a brick wall. If he were a Stilinski, Stiles would have grabbed him and forced him to hug it out by now, but that’s not Derek at all. He’s more vulnerable that he wants to show, but Stiles knows he can’t just point that out and expect Derek to agree and come home with him. It’s absolutely no exaggeration at all to say Derek would rather die than show any weakness.

So he shrugs and says, “Stella was worried about you.”

It’s a low blow, but it’s not a lie. And okay, it’s not a conversation that Stiles has had with Stella, but he knows his little sister. She’s as protective of the people she cares about as Stiles is. Stiles’s list is a lot shorter than Stella’s but somehow Derek Hale has made his way onto both of them.

Derek stares at him. “It’s past midnight. You shouldn’t be out here.”

“Afraid I’ll turn into a pumpkin?” Stiles asks. The sagging porch steps creak as he climbs them.

Derek glares at him, but come on. He wasn’t raised on an alien planet. Stiles _knows_ he gets the reference.

“Yeah, it’s past midnight,” Stiles says, squaring his shoulders. “And you’re camping in the burned out remains of your family home. It’s stupid. I mean, my house has a garage we can put an air mattress in. Dad parks in the driveway. He’ll never even know you’re there.”

Derek’s mouth presses into a thin line before he speaks. “I’m not coming to sleep in your garage, Stiles.”

“Why not?” Stiles demands, because he’s pretty sure Derek responds better to aggression than he does to comfort. “At least it doesn’t have holes in the wall.”

He actually growls. “I don’t need your pity!”

Derek is all hard angles and bristling anger now, but there’s an undercurrent of vulnerability to him. It’s always been there, like one of those dumb Magic Eye pictures. For a while Stiles just saw lines and shapes and colors, but he’s seen the real picture now, and he can’t pretend to unsee it.

“I’m not offering you pity, sourwolf,” Stiles says, part of him almost enjoying the way Derek turns up the wattage on his glare when that word falls out of his mouth. “I’m offering you shelter. It’s way before pity on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It’s right at the base of the pyramid. You don’t get anywhere near esteem and self-actualisation until you’ve got a place to sleep. That’s _science_.”

Derek is unimpressed with science. “Go home, Stiles.”

He turns away and Stiles reaches out to grab his arm. “Look, you gave Scott that whole dumbass talk about being werewolf brothers now, and you know he’s not here for that, but, like, _I_ am.”

The slight widening of Derek’s eyes warns him he’s crossing into territory he didn’t mean to, and wasn’t supposed to, but Stiles’s mouth has never needed his brain to engage first in order to operate. Words just sort of happen for Stiles.

“And I know I’m nobody’s first choice, dude, but I’m offering you shelter, and probably even the occasional hot meal and shower, and that’s a hell of a lot more than you’ve got going on out here.”

Derek wrenches his arm away. “I’m not going with you, Stiles. Don’t you get it? The Alpha is trying to pull me and Scott into whatever game he’s playing, and soon that might mean coming after the people we know. Even coming out here tonight you might have put a target on your back. You think I should go and stay at your _house_? Where your dad and your little sister live? What the hell is wrong with you?”

Oh.

Oh, okay.

Stiles gets it now, he thinks.

It’s more words that Derek has ever spoken to him, probably, and it makes a painful feeling bloom in Stiles’s chest.

It’s not just Derek’s pride at play here at all.

Derek is trying to protect him, and Dad, and Stella.

“Yeah,” he says, his voice rasping. “But if the Alpha is coming after the people you know, then I’m already on his list, aren’t I? I’m Scott’s best friend.”

“You’re prey,” Derek tells him. “You’re supposed to stay quiet and still and hope the wolf doesn’t notice you.”

“Have you _met_ me though?”

He hoped it would get at least a snort out of Derek, but Derek just stares at him a moment longer.

“Go home, Stiles,” he says at last, and turns and goes back inside whatever remains of his house.

Stiles stands on the porch a moment longer. When he speaks, it’s in his usual tone. He knows Derek will hear him.

“Dad’s on earlies this week. He leaves before six. Stella and I have breakfast at around six-thirty. We’ll put out a spare plate if you change your mind.”

Then, his eyes stinging a little, he leaves and drives home.

 

***

 

Derek doesn’t turn up for breakfast.

Stiles drops Stella off at school, hugs her goodbye, and drives to the high school. He’s early enough that he gets a good park, and sits in the driver’s seat staring at the school building, his finger and thumb pressing tight on the key in the Jeep’s ignition.

This is a mess.

This is a whole fucking mess, and nobody is doing anything. The Alpha is playing them all—Derek and Scott and the hunters, and even Stiles. He’s batting them all around like a cat does with a shivering mouse that it’s caught, and Stiles knows that sooner or later something has to give, and it’s going to be the mouse.

They need a game changer.

They need to break the pattern and shift the balance.

They need _something_.

Fuck this. 

Stiles might not be a werewolf, and he might not be able to fight the Alpha, but there’s one thing he’s always been good at, and that’s research. If he can find the connection between the Alpha and the murders, then maybe he can find the Alpha’s identity, and Derek and Scott can have a chance at getting the drop on him.

It’s about time Stiles stopped pretending that werewolf stuff was just something he can get around to after school and on weekends. This is life and death. The normal rules don’t apply. He’ll deal with the fallout for skipping classes when it happens, because—best case scenario—at least he’ll be alive to get his multiple detentions, right?

He stares at the school for a moment longer as the parking lot slowly fills, and then restarts the engine and drives home.

 

***

 

Stiles hears Dad’s cruiser pulling up in the driveway at just past nine. He shoves the files he’s printed out from the photos he took back into his old gym bag, and pushes the bag under his bed. By the time Dad gets upstairs, Stiles is curled up under his comforter, a glass of water and a conspicuous bottle of Tylenol on his bedside table.

His bedroom door squeaks open.

“Kiddo?”

“Hey,” he says, hoping he sounds weak and sad.

“I got a call from the school,” Dad says. The mattress dips when he sits on it. “They said you didn’t come in. Are you feeling okay?”

“Headache,” Stiles mumbles into his pillow. He doesn’t skip very often, which he hopes makes the occasions he does seem more believable.

Dad leans over him to feel his forehead, and Stiles feels a rush of warmth at the gesture. Then Dad straightens up again, and rubs Stiles’s back gently, the way Mom used to when he was sick. “You need anything from the pharmacy?”

“No. I think I’ll be okay if I can sleep it off.”

“Okay, son,” Dad says. “I’ll pick Stella up this afternoon, so you can rest. Do you want me to make you some soup before I head back in?”

“No, I’m good,” Stiles murmurs.

Dad leans down and kisses him on the top of the head, and Stiles feels like he’s a little kid again, warm and safe and loved. “Call me if you need anything.”

“’kay.”

He waits until he hears Dad tread down the steps again, and the front door clicks closed. Then he waits until he hears the cruiser leave before scrambling out of bed and pulling the files out again.

Because Stiles might not have fangs or claws, or super speed and super hearing, but he can still hunt the Alpha in his own way.

He gets back to work.

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

There are patterns, Dad has always told Stiles. Once is an incident, twice is a coincidence, and three times is a pattern. Stiles has four murder victims courtesy of the Alpha, but it’s just not _right_. The two guys who were drinking out in the woods—Reddick and Unger—were petty criminals mostly, both of them with criminal history dating back to their teens. Theft and assault, domestic violence in Unger’s case, minor drug possession—major in Reddick’s case—and arson. When Unger was nineteen he torched a car he stole. When Reddick was twenty-three he set a fire in a storage garage to get rid of a drug lab, and burned down two neighbouring warehouses. There’s no indication either of them was a fire bug—by which Stiles means they had some deep-seated psychological compulsion to set fires—but it’s not hard to imagine that either of these guys, or both of them, might have been involved in the Hale house fire for the right amount of cash. 

And it all comes back to the fire, right?

Garrison Myers drove the school bus, but once upon a time he was also a fire scene investigator working with the BHFD. His report was the main reason that the Hale fire was ruled as non-suspicious, and written off as probably an electrical fault.

Three men with possible connections to the Hale fire, and all three of them ripped apart by the Alpha.

It’s a pattern.

Except then there’s Laura Hale.

If someone is wanting revenge on the people who killed the Hales, then why kill Laura?

Laura Hale is the pebble in Stiles’s shoe. She’s the one part that doesn’t make sense, unless she was somehow complicit in the fire as well…and Stiles isn’t ready to voice that theory aloud to Derek. Or to anyone.

The only way Stiles can make Laura fit is if the Alpha is an Argent, because if the Argents set the fire—and Derek says they did—then wouldn’t it make sense for them to try to cover their tracks by killing their co-conspirators? And also killing Laura too, because they hate the Hales so much?

Maybe the Alpha isn’t after revenge at all.

Maybe the Alpha is someone taking care of loose ends.

Except is there _is_ an Argent werewolf running around out there somewhere, that makes even _less_ sense, doesn’t it? Because Stiles doesn’t think the Argents are the sort of people who would relax their anti-werewolf stance just because one of their own sprouted fur and fangs, right?

Stiles has no idea anymore, to be honest.

All he knows is that everything is a lot more complicated than it appears.

 

***

 

Stiles wanders through the next few days paying absolutely no attention at all to his surroundings. Which is par for the course, really, and nobody seems to notice anything out of the usual. Stiles’s brain is often doing something totally different while his body goes through the motions. His brain is free-ranging, and all the Adderall in the world can’t keep in on a short leash for very long.

Stiles even completely manages to forget about the upcoming winter formal until Scott is complaining about it at lunch, and how he’s not supposed to be going because his grades are so bad, and he got in that fight with Jackson at practise, but…

“What?” Stiles asks suddenly, his brain clicking back into place. “You’re not actually thinking about still going, are you?”

Scott gets that dopey smile on his face. “Allison is going to be there.”

Stiles gestures around the cafeteria. “So? So is that kid who flushed our heads in the toilet on the first day of high school, but we both see him enough every day anyway, right?”

Scott’s brow wrinkles. “What?”

“Scotty, you see her every day,” Stiles says. “You’re not suffering Allison withdrawal. It’s impossible.”

Scott smiles and shakes his head. “You don’t understand, Stiles. It’d be different, at the dance.”

Stiles considers that for a moment. He imagines himself dancing with Lydia—it’s an old fantasy—and how magical it would be, but somehow it’s just not pulling him in the way it usually does. And then, like the needle on his brain has skipped a track on the record, he’s suddenly picturing what Derek Hale looks like in a tux.

“I get it,” he concedes at last. “Also, if we survive this whole thing, remind me to tell you about the staggering personal revelation I’ve recently been coming to terms with. Meanwhile though, Allison’s family are _hunters_. I love you like a brother, Scotty, and I’d hate to imagine you stuffed and mounted above the Argents’ fireplace.”

“That’s fair,” Scott says, but he doesn’t agree to stop seeing Allison.

He’s never going to agree to that, is he?

“Listen,” Stiles says, “when you met Allison’s family, did any of them seem a little bit wolfy to you?”

“What? No.” Scott snorts at the idea. “They’re hunters. You just said that. Why would you even ask something like that?”

Stiles stabs his tater tots. “Just a crazy thought.”

Just trying to see the pattern, and circling back again to the one piece that doesn’t fit: Laura Hale. 

Scott watches him worriedly.

“You’ve got Derek’s number, right?” Stiles asks him. “Can I have it?”

Scott shrugs and hands his phone over.

 

 

***

 

Stiles sends Derek a text in Chemistry: _This is Stiles. If the Alpha is some kind of werewolf vigilante killing people for revenge, why would he kill Laura?_

He doesn’t get an answer.

He doesn’t really expect one.

 

***

 

Stiles isn’t gonna lie. He misses _Matilda_. He and Stella have been reading other stuff at bedtime now, because she saves _Matilda_ for her coma patient. And Stiles is not going to be jealous of some poor guy who can’t even wipe his own ass, but he misses Matilda. He’s thinking about stealing it while Stella’s asleep just to find out how it ends.

Stella shoves carrot sticks in her face while Stiles drives her to the hospital after school. “And then after we finish,” she says through a mouthful, “I’m going to read him _The Witches_.”

“Wait… how long does this program go for?” Stiles asks, resiting the urge to flip the bird at the old lady in the Honda who just pulled out in front of them.

“Just until Friday,” Stella tells him. “But Mrs. McCall says I can come back if I want. I like her a lot more than Peter’s nurse.”

“Peter?” Stiles asks, distracted again as the old lady suddenly slams on the brakes for no discernable reason.

“The man I read to,” Stella tells him around a carrot stick. “Mrs. McCall isn’t his nurse all the time, but I don’t like his regular nurse. She has red hair.”

“Correlation doesn’t equal causation,” Stiles tells her, finally getting around the Honda as the old lady pulls into the parking lot of the CVS.

“What?”

“Red hair doesn’t make someone unlikable.”

“I never said it did,” Stella points out.

“Fair. So why don’t you like his nurse?”

“She’s mean,” Stella says. “She said I was getting in her way.”

“And were you?”

“No!” Stella’s eyes are big and wide, and Stiles doesn’t believe her wounded innocence shtick for a second. He knows that look. He _invented_ that look. “I wasn’t even doing anything except reading.”

“Well make sure you don’t,” Stiles tells her.

She rolls her eyes at him, and shoves another carrot stick in her mouth.

 

***

 

Stiles walks Stella into the hospital foyer, and then goes back and sits in the Jeep. He cracks open a can of Coke—bubbles and sugar are research fuel—and then leans between the front seats to haul his old gym bag free. He sets it on the passenger seat, unzips it, and starts reading through Garrison Myers’ file. 

The guy was the arson investigator for the Hale fire.

That has to be the pattern.

Except for Laura…

Sighing, Stiles shoves Myers’ file back in the bag and pulls out the Laura’s file. There’s nothing here that he hasn’t already read. He puts it back down, and starts to flick through the Hale fire file instead, hoping that a mention of Laura will jump out at him. Except she’s barely even a witness. She wasn’t there when the fire happened, and said she didn’t see anything, and that she didn’t know anything. She’s a next of kin, that’s all. Most of the mentions of Laura are as the person who identified the bodies.

Stiles closes his eyes for a moment, swallowing, and battling down the sudden visceral wave of nausea that hits him. She was eighteen, and she had to identify all those people.

He concentrates on breathing for a moment, and then opens his eyes when his phone buzzes in his pocket.

He checks the screen. _Sourwolf._

He takes the call. “Hey, Derek.”

“Laura didn’t have anything to do with the fire.”

“Oh.” Stiles kicks himself mentally. Of course Derek took his text in the worst possible way. It’s Derek. It’s what he does. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that she did. Just that the pattern doesn’t fit, you know? If the Alpha is all about getting revenge on hunters for killing werewolves, then why kill Laura?”

Derek is silent for so long that Stiles actually has to check if the call is still connected. Then, at last, he says softly: “I don’t know.”

“And like, dude, if that’s the motive, then _you’d_ be suspect number one, right?” Stiles asks. “Not Laura, again, but the fire. I mean, your whole family…”

He stares down at the paperwork spread over the front seat.

Derek’s whole family.

Except.

Except…

He just read the list of bodies that Laura identified, and…

His blood runs cold.

“Stiles?” Derek asks. “Are you still there?”

“There’s no…” Stiles shuffles frantically through the papers, adrenaline spiking and making his fingers tremble. “I thought I copied every page, but there’s not autopsy report for Peter Hale in here.”

“Peter’s not dead,” Derek says. “He’s in a coma.”

Peter’s not…

Stiles’s entire world flips.

An ambulance screeches past, the siren wailing.

“Stiles?” Derek sounds urgent now. “Where are you?”

“The hospital.” Stiles stares at the building through the windshield, his heart racing. “I’m at the hospital.”

“Get out of there, Stiles,” Derek tells him, and Stiles thinks that maybe Derek’s entire world has just flipped too, and it’s left them both standing in the same place. Staring wide-eyed at the same conclusion. “It’s Peter!”

Stiles’s hand shakes as he opens the door of the Jeep.

“Stiles?” Derek asks. “Stiles!”

“Stella’s in there,” Stiles says, his voice trembling. “Stella’s in there with the Alpha.”

“Stiles!”

Stiles barely hears him. He shoves his phone in his pocket and begins to run toward the hospital.


	9. Chapter 9

Ever since his mom died, Stiles has had nightmares about the hospital. About being stuck inside it, wandering corridors that all look the same, taking hundreds of turns and never finding himself anywhere different. It was hard, at first, to come here with Scott whenever he was dropping dinner off for his mom. It was hard to go with Dad to Stella’s paediatrician appointments when she was little. Hard to go to his own too, when he had to see a therapist after Mom died. Stiles can remember standing in the parking lot screaming, afraid that if he went inside he’d never come out again.

He doesn’t hesitate today.

Not even the memory of his mom, and those long, awful months when she just took so long to die, can slow him down.

Stella is all he thinks about as he races inside, heading for the elevators that will take him up to the long term care ward. Stella, who’s in the same room as the murderous Alpha.

He punches the buttons in the elevator, living a thousand lifetimes in the space of the moments it takes for the doors to open on the second floor.

He knows these corridors. His mom was in one of these rooms. This isn’t the first time he’s run down them, although it’s maybe the first time he’s running towards something.

 _“He’s a monster, John! He’s_ killing  _me!”_

There wasn’t a monster in the hospital back then, but there is now. And Stiles is running right for him, glancing into every room he passes, dodging around a cart of rumpled sheets, his shoes squeaking on the floor.

And then he finds them.

He catches himself on the doorframe and pulls himself to a stop, jarring his shoulder. 

“You must be Stiles,” says the man with the smile. The man with the scar-puckered face. The man with blood on his hands. “Stella has told me all about you.”

 

***

 

It takes a moment for Stiles to see all the pieces on the board. The Alpha, the redheaded nurse holding her stomach while blood spreads over her scrubs like ink through blotting paper, and Stella. Stella standing at the end of the bed, hugging _Matilda_ to her chest, her eyes wide.

The Alpha is standing between Stiles and Stella. The nurse is by the window.

And the Alpha—Peter Hale—is still smiling.

Stiles’s heart is trying to burst through his ribcage, and his hands are shaking. He stares past the Alpha to Stella, rakes his gaze down her to make sure none of the blood is hers. Her little fingers are white, she’s gripping _Matilda_ so hard.

“Peter Hale,” he says, his voice rasping.

Peter Hale inclines his head, still wearing that chilling smile.

The redheaded nurse moves suddenly, and so does Peter Hale. He backhands her and sends her flying. She hits the wall and slumps to the floor. The angle of her neck is… it’s all wrong.

She might be dead.

Stiles thinks she might be actually dead.

Peter Hale rolls his shoulders, moves his head from side to side like he’s working the tension out of his neck. “Bitch.”

Stiles takes a step forward. He wants Stella to come to him, but he can’t ask her to move past the Alpha. So he takes another step forward, waiting to feel claws rip through him.

Another step.

Peter’s smile softens into something that looks almost fond, if he wasn’t a monster.

And then Stiles is shoulder to shoulder with the beast, and then he’s moving past him. His skin crawls. This will be the moment the Alpha attacks, right? When Stiles has his back to him. And then he’s three steps in the clear, and Stella is burrowing into his embrace, tear-stained and trembling.

Stiles keeps his back to the Alpha. Keeps himself between the Alpha and Stella. Turns his head slowly to look at the monster.

To look into those blue eyes, clear and bright and _knowing_ in the scar-ravaged landscape of his face.

“You must be Stiles,” Peter Hale says again.

And Stiles nods.

 

***

 

Nobody comes. That’s the craziest thing. Melissa always complains that the hospital is understaffed, and Stiles guesses that, apart from rounds, there are a lot of hours that the patients in the long-term ward are just left on their own, to read, or to sleep, or to stare at their TV screens. They must be between rounds now, between meal and laundry services too, because nobody comes. The clock on the wall says that it’s just past 4.30, so nobody will come looking for Stella until five either.

The redheaded nurse lies slumped where she fell, blood pooled around her. There’s no more pumping out of the wound in her stomach. Stiles thinks that means her heart has stopped.

Stiles has seen dead bodies before. Well, he’s seen half of Laura Hale’s body, and a lot of autopsy photographs, but he’s never seen someone actually die in front of him before.

It doesn’t feel as big as it should. It should feel momentous, he thinks, but he’s too wrapped up in his own fear for him and Stella to even think of the nurse. Maybe it’s the sort of thing that will hit him later, if there is a later.

He looks over his shoulder at the Alpha, and discovers that Peter Hale is looking back, his head tilted like he’s not quite sure what he’s seeing. Like Stiles’s fear is a curious thing, and he has no idea what to make of it.

“Stiles,” Stella whispers, lifting her tear-stained face. “I want Dad. I want to go home.”

Stiles tightens his shaking fingers in the back of her shirt. He doesn’t know what will happen if he tries to move toward the door. He doesn’t know if Peter will lash out. He’s terrified that movement will cause Peter to attack, but also it’s not like he and Stella can stand here forever, right?

And then Peter lifts his nose, and his expression sharpens, and he turns toward the door—

“Stiles!” Derek yells, flinging himself into the room. “Get down!”

Stiles drops to the floor, taking Stella with him.

He hears a crash, and the table beside the bed spins away on its wheels as Derek and Peter slam into it.

They’re still between Stiles and the door.

Stiles pushes Stella toward the bed, and she crawls underneath like a tiny commando. Stiles follows her, twisting his head to see where Peter and Derek are now.

They’re… everywhere.

It’s a small room, and their fight sees them use every inch of it. They’re fast, and they’re violent, and Stiles can’t see enough of what’s going on to even take a guess at who’s going to win this thing. His sinking heart says it’s Peter though, right? Because Alphas are strong, stronger than betas. Much stronger.

The only thing Stiles knows for sure is that he has to get Stella out of here.

He waits until he sees Peter hit the floor, Derek landing on top of him, and pushes Stella out from under the bed. He scrambles out after her.

“Go!” he tells her. “Get out!”

She bolts for the door, Stiles right behind her.

He hears a roar. It chills him. He turns.

Derek’s on the floor now, on his back beside the dead nurse, and Peter’s hand is clamped around his throat. Derek’s back is bowed as he fights his uncle’s grip.

Stiles’s heart skips a beat.

Peter looks up and meets his gaze. Holds it, and then looks down at Derek again. To Stiles’s surprise Peter releases him, and Derek slumps onto the floor.

“I’m family, nephew,” he says, his breathing strained. “I’m _pack_.”

And Stiles sees it right in that moment.

He sees how Derek’s going to capitulate, because Derek’s all alone in the world, or he thinks he is. He’s all alone, and Peter isn’t just his Alpha, he’s his only living relative. And that _matters_. Stiles knows it matters. And there must be years of history between them. Maybe Peter taught Derek how to play baseball and ride a bike. Or maybe he taught him how to howl at the moon. But there’s years, and there’s love and guilt and a hundred different other things all twisted up into some sick sense of obligation—family and pack, pack and family—and Derek is going to give in. Stiles is going to lose him in this moment.

He can feel it in his bones.

“Derek,” Stiles says, his voice rasping. His throat aches and his eyes are stinging. “Der, he killed Laura.”

Peter’s top lip lifts in a silent growl. A challenge and a victory smirk at the same time, and Stiles feels his sense of loss break over him like a storm.

And Derek…

Derek doesn’t answer him. Doesn’t even look at him. He just lies there, like the dead nurse, and Stiles knows there’s nothing he can say to change this. Nothing he can say to save Derek. Derek’s got no fight left in him now.

He’s done.

“Leave, Stiles,” Peter says. “While you still can.”

Stiles registers Stella tugging at his hand.

“Derek,” he says once more, for all the good his pleading tone does.

Derek turns his face away.

And then Stiles leaves.

 

***

 

Stiles doesn’t even know how he makes it home without crashing into anything. His hands are shaking, and his vision is blurry. When he blinks, hot tears slide down his cheeks.

“You’re okay,” he says to Stella, clinging to it because it’s the only thing stopping him from drowning. “You’re okay.”

A woman died today, but Stella’s okay.

Derek gave into the Alpha today, but Stella’s okay.

Stiles can hardly breathe, but Stella’s okay.

She sits beside him on the couch, small and solicitous, and brings him a can of soda without being asked, and opens up Matilda and starts to read aloud: “Matilda said, ‘Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it's unbelievable...’”

Stiles curls his fingers around his can of soda, and wonders how she’s okay. Not just physically, but mentally. How is she not a mess? Fuck knows Stiles is a mess.

Stella’s forehead creases as she looks at him. “Stiles?”

“Yeah?”

There are a million questions she could ask him now, and he would have no idea how to answer any one of them. Except she doesn’t ask about death, or Alphas, or Derek, or even Peter. Instead she pulls something out from between the pages of her book.

It’s a thin piece of…plastic, Stiles thinks at first, before he takes it in his shaking hand. But it doesn’t feel like plastic, or even wood. It might be bone? It’s as small and thin as a guitar pick, but there are weird symbols carved on it.

“What is it?”

Stella shrugs.

“Where’d you get it?”

“I found it on the floor,” Stella says, her eyes wide. “When I showed the nurse, she tried to take it off me. That’s when Peter woke up and stuck his claws in her.”

_“What?”_

Stella holds up her hand and slides the sleeve of her shirt back. She has bruises on her forearm. Finger marks.

“The nurse did that to you?”

Stella nods solemnly.

Stiles turns the weird little token over in his palm. There are more symbols on the back. Is it possible there’s more at play here than a crazy Alpha?

“We should Google what it means,” Stella says decisively.

Yeah.

Yeah, they really should.

 


	10. Chapter 10

Stiles gets the frantic call from Dad while he and Stella are eating Cheetos and Googling images of weird symbols on Stiles’s laptop.

“Stiles! Is Stella with you?”

Stiles tries to sound casual. “Sure is. What’s up, Dad?”

He hears Dad’s long, slow sigh of relief, and can picture his shoulders sagging with it. “I’m at the hospital. Peter Hale is missing, and so is his nurse.”

“I’m not following,” Stiles says, doing the zip-your-lip gesture to Stella.

She nods seriously.

Dad’s voice is strained. “He’s the coma patient Stella was reading to.”

“Oh,” Stiles say. “Well I picked her up, no problems.”

“What time was that?”

“A little past 4.30,” Stiles says. “She sent me a text saying she wasn’t feeling well, and she wanted to come home early.”

“Stiles.” This time there’s a note of rebuke in Dad’s voice. “Did you tell Mrs. Lucas you took her home early?”

“No.” Stiles feels a genuine jab of guilt at that, and wonders if Mrs. Lucas is the one who discovered the room was empty. How fast can werewolves clean up a crime scene, by the way? Super fast, apparently. Although it’s a hospital. There’s already a lot of bleach lying around. “No, I forgot, sorry.”

“It’s okay, kid,” Dad says, and Stiles figures this is something he’ll revisit when he’s not so overcome with relief. “It’s okay. Listen, I’m not going to make it home until late tonight. Can you make dinner and put Stella to bed?”

“Sure, Dad,” Stiles says. “I’ll leave you a plate in the refrigerator, okay?”

“Thanks, kid,” Dad says. “That’d be great.”

Dad ends the call.

“He’s not coming home tonight, is he?” Stella asks.

“No.” Stiles sets his phone down. “You’re stuck with me, kiddo. Bad luck.”

Stella knocks her shoulder against his. Her eyes are wide and her expression is solemn. “Does it always feel bad when you lie to Dad?”

Stiles feels guilt stir in his gut. “Yeah. It does.”

She’s not talking about the little stuff, he knows. She’s not talking about who put a scratch in the paintwork of Dad’s cruiser when it was parked in the driveway (Stella, on her bike), or who put a dent in the wall with his head (Stiles, playing indoor baseball), or who stole the last Oreo (both of them, on multiple separate occasions).

This isn’t just lying about something that doesn’t even matter—or something Dad has probably guessed anyway. This is worse than a single lie. It’s bigger.

Stella wrinkles her nose. “So why aren’t we telling him about werewolves?”

“Because it’s dangerous,” Stiles tells her. “Because it’s better if he doesn’t know the truth. If he knew, then he’d try to stop it, and the last thing we want is Dad getting mixed up in all this, you know?”

He blinks, and sees the nurse hitting the wall.

Stella looks down at her hands, and curls her fingers into an approximation of claws. She looks up at Stiles again, her forehead creased, and nods. “Peter didn’t hurt me,” she says, “but that doesn’t mean he’d let Dad arrest him. And Dad would have to try to arrest him because it’s his job.”

Stiles wasn’t this clever when he was eight, he thinks.

There are days now when he’s not as clever as Stella, probably, but he’d never admit it aloud. She doesn’t need the ego boost.

“There are a lot of people with ugly tattoos,” Stella says as they scroll through some more pictures of symbols. “Ha! That one’s on his butt!”

Stiles closes the laptop.

“What?” Stella asks. “It was just a butt!”

“Yeah, and we don’t look at butts on the internet,” Stiles says, because he’s the biggest hypocrite in the world. He reaches for the strange little token again, and turns it over in his palm. He’s got a headache from staring at so many weird patterns, and they didn’t find anything that looked even remotely similar. He’s tired of combing the haystack for needles.

He sets the token down, and picks up his phone. He sends yet another text to Derek: _Are you ok? Please answer._ He’s sent six texts since the hospital, and tried to call three times, but Derek’s phone is switched off.

Stiles hopes he’s okay.

He hopes that Peter hasn’t torn him apart and left his body in pieces in the Preserve, like he did to Laura.

Just… there is so much going on that Stiles doesn’t understand, and the reason he doesn’t understand is because getting information out of Derek has been like trying to get blood out of a stone. Even though Stiles has been in his corner since that night at Deaton’s vet clinc, and—

Deaton’s vet clinic.

 _Deaton_.

Deaton is always around when something shady happens, and he was always dropping hints to Scott that said more than his actual words did, and Stiles was so sure he was the Alpha because he obviously knew something. And okay, he’s _not_  the Alpha, but he still obviously knows something.

Shit.

He’s been such an idiot.

Derek didn’t just demand Stiles take him to Deaton’s that night because he thought he might need a bone saw, did he? No, he was looking for an antidote at first. And regular vets, Stiles is sure, don’t know how to cure aconite poisoning in werewolves. Because who the fuck would?

But Deaton knows.

Deaton is _not_  a regular vet. 

“Get your shoes on,” he tells Stella. “We’re going to see Dr. Deaton.”

 

***

 

It’s just on dusk when Stiles and Stella arrive at the animal clinic. Stiles knows Scott isn’t working tonight, but there’s a light on in the foyer, so presumably Deaton is still in. He tries the door, but it’s locked. He knocks, and a moment later Dr. Deaotn appears from behind the counter.

He sort of knows Stiles, Stiles guesses, so hopefully that means he knows Stiles isn’t here to steal the ketamine.

Deaton opens the door. “Stiles?”

“Hi,” Stiles says. “Can we come in?”

“I was just doing the books,” Deaton says, holding the door for them. “What’s the problem?”

Stiles opens his mouth.

Then he closes it again, because no, he hasn’t really thought this through.

“You don’t have an animal with you,” Deaton points out.

“Meow,” says Stella helpfully.

Oh god. She’s an idiot. She gets that from Stiles as well.

But it breaks the ice, or at least makes Stiles realize that he has to say something before Deaton kicks them out, so he digs into his pocket and pulls out the token. “Do you know what this is?”

Deaton stares at it, and then looks up at Stiles and says, “No.”

It’s a lie.

Stiles is one hundred percent sure it’s a lie.

“Where did you get it?” Deaton asks.

“Doesn’t matter,” Stiles says. “Since you don’t know what it is.”

The challenge lies in the air heavily for a moment, and then Deaton smiles slightly and dips his chin, as though Stiles has passed some sort of test.

“You’d better come through,” he says, and lifts the counter up so that they can follow him into the back room.

 

***

 

The last time Stiles was in this room, he was debating cutting Derek Hale’s arm off with a bone saw. Not a nice memory. So he focuses on Deaton instead, and on the half-eaten tandoori chicken in the takeout box on the bench. His stomach growls.

“May I?” Deaton asks, and Stiles hands over the strange little token.

Stella presses close to Stiles.

“What you have here,” Deaton says, “for lack of any better explanation, is a magnet.”

“It’s made of bone,” Stiles points out.

 “Yes,” Deaton agrees placidly. “That was an analogy. This magnet wasn’t created to attract metal. It was created to attract a spark.”

“A what?”

“An Alpha spark, specifically.”

“I’m not following. Story of my life, recently, by the way.”

Deaton’s mouth twitches in what might be a smile, but might also be acid reflux courtesy of his tandoori. “Let’s pretend that there are werewolves in the world.”

“Sure,” Stiles says. “Let’s _pretend_.”

“Now in every pack, you have the Alpha, who is the leader. You also have betas, who are pack members. And omegas, who are packless wolves who risk going feral because of it. Now, when an Alpha dies, their power—their _spark_ —is either passed down to their heir, or it is taken by the wolf who kills them.”

“Brutal.”

“Quite so.” Deaton turns the token over in his palm. “Now, say you were a beta or an omega who wanted an Alpha spark, but for some reason weren’t in line for it. Perhaps the Alpha doesn’t die at your hand or, more likely, you are not the Alpha’s heir. If you have a magnet to draw that spark, you can steal it.” He meets Stiles’s gaze. “Where did you get this, Stiles?”

“Peter Hale had it,” Stiles says. “He’s the Alpha. You know, if werewolves were real.”

“Peter,” Deaton says, and exhales heavily. “I wondered why it didn’t go to Derek.”

“So he made that?” Stiles asks. “To steal Laura’s spark?”

“A wolf couldn’t make this,” Deaton says. “This is the work of a druid.”

Oh great. So there’s a whole other supernatural thing Stiles now has to accept is real. Like, where does it stop? Are vampires a thing as well? Is the Mothman? Because Stiles would like to know where the line is, frankly.

“I’ll bet it was the nurse,” Stella says. “I’ll bet it was Jennifer!”

“We can’t know that.”

“You can, actually,” Deaton says, because apparently he really knows how to drop a bombshell. “It would have been someone very close to him, and on the few occasions our paths have crossed, she has always smelled a little like magic.”

“What does magic smell like?” Stella asks eagerly.

“Like ozone,” Deaton says, and somehow it’s not even the weirdest thing he’s said tonight.

“Well, she smells less pleasant now,” Stiles says. “She’s dead. Peter killed her.”

Deaton actually looks mildly surprised. Only mildly though.

Stiles reaches for the token again, but Deaton holds it out of his reach. And then he snaps it cleanly.

“Hey!”

“The balance must be maintained,” Deaton says. “Something like this should never have been created.”

It’s a far point, probably, but _rude_.

Stiles rubs his forehead. “So Peter used that thing that the nurse made to make sure that Laura’s Alpha spark went to him when he killed her?”

“That seems a reasonable assumption,” Deaton agrees.

“Okay,” Stiles says. “So what now? Peter’s the Alpha and Derek is his beta.” So is Scott, of course, but Stiles doesn’t mention that. Deaton _probably_   knows, but probably isn’t definitely, and the more Scott can stay out of things, the better. “How do we stop Peter from killing more people, and get Derek away from him?”

“I don’t know,” Deaton says. “Sometimes these things just need to play out. Sometimes it’s more dangerous to intervene.”

Stiles snorts. “Yeah, well there’s a rapidly rising body count that disagrees with you.”

“There’s a balance,” Deaton says. “If you upset it, there’s no way of telling which way all the pieces will fall.”

He sounds like he’s speaking from experience.

It’s still a bullshit philosophy though.

 

***

 

“Indian?” Stiles asks Stella as they head for the Jeep.

“Mmm.” She wrinkles her nose. “Sushi?”

“I want something hot.”

“But I want sushi.”

Stiles sighs. “Pizza?” 

“Okay!”

They’re almost at the Jeep when Stiles becomes aware of a vehicle crawling down the road behind them. He turns, half-expecting it to be Dad in his cruiser, wondering why the hell they’re in this part of town at this hour, or one of his deputies eager to report back, but it’s not a police cruiser. It’s a black SUV.

Stiles grabs Stella by the hand and picks up the pace.

The SUV picks up the pace too, and pulls in right behind the Jeep, blocking it in.

The tinted window slides down, and a woman Stiles has never seen before smiles out at him from the passenger’s seat. “Need a ride, kids? Get in.”

“We’re good,” Stiles says, trying to gauge the distance back to Deaton’s and wondering if they could make it before the SUV can catch them.

It’s a moot point.

“I said get in,” the woman says, still smiling, and holds up her hand to show them that she’s carrying a gun.

 


	11. Chapter 11

Stiles knows one thing for certain. He knows that if he and Stella get into the SUV, they’re not getting out again. He also knows that you don’t argue with a person with a gun, however much she’s smiling.

“Okay,” he says, hating the way his voice cracks on that simple word. “Okay, we’re getting in.”

Stella makes a small frightened sound beside him.

He steps forward and opens the back door of the SUV. There’s nobody in the backseat. Good.

The open door gives them a few seconds maybe, where the woman thinks he’s obeying her. And a few seconds where it obscures her vision of them. A few seconds, but he has to use them.

“Run,” he mouths to Stella, and shoves her. And says, aloud, “Okay, we’re getting in.”

A few seconds, and then he’s turning, and running, keeping himself between Stella and the woman. Keeping himself in her line of fire.

“Back up!” the woman yells at the driver. “Back up!”

And the tires of the SUV screech, and the open back door wobbles back and forth like a loose tooth as the SUV spins around in a speedy three-point turn to face them.

“Help!” Stella screams as she runs, and how does she have any breath left in the lungs at all? “Help! Help us!”

Her shoes slap on the pavement as they bolt back toward Deaton’s.

Stella hammers on the glass front door, and Stiles hems her in as the SUV closes on them.

Oh God. They’re sitting ducks now, aren’t they? Stiles shields Stella—tells himself to fall forward to cover her when he’s hit—and then he _is_ falling, but if he’s hurt he can’t feel it, and there’s a strange popping sound, and the SUV is speeding off back into the night.

It takes Stiles a moment to figure out what happened.

It helps that he’s lying on the floor on top of Stella, and Deaton is staring down at them, eyebrows raised.

He opened the door, Stiles figures, and they both tumbled through like skittles.

Deaton isn’t their only audience though.

A man wearing coveralls with the name of the tire place across the street is hurrying toward them too.

“What the hell’s going on?” he asks. “Shit. Is that a bullet hole in your window, Alan?” And he holds up his cell phone. “I called the cops.”

Stiles should panic about that, he thinks, but at the moment he’s way too relieved to actually be alive.

 

***

 

Dad turns up, lights and sirens heralding his approach. Well, first Tara turns up, but the second she sees who’s involved, she calls Dad, and Stiles knows there’s no use telling her that it’s not necessary. It’s a lie anyway, because the moment Dad turns up, Stiles goes weak at the knees, and can barely hold himself up long enough for Stella to get her hug before he’s stumbling into Dad’s embrace as well. He’s shaking, and he can’t stop, and Dad rubs his back and makes angry, growling kind of shushing noises that fall somewhere between ‘You’re okay, son’ and ‘I’m gonna kill a motherfucker.’ Stiles finds both sentiments equally comforting, to be honest.

“Heard the little girl yellin’ as she ran down the street,” the guy from the tire place is telling Tara. “By the time I got over here, Alan had already got them inside.”

Stiles inhales heavily. Dad smells of coffee and aftershave.

Dad peels Stiles off him gently. “Talk me through it, kid.”

Stiles sucks in a breath. “We were, we were leaving the clinic, and the black SUV pulled in behind us. I didn’t get the license plate. And the woman in the passenger seat asked if we wanted a ride. I said no, and…” He shudders.

“She pointed a gun at us!” Stella exclaims, sounding more outraged than upset. “So Stiles pretended we were getting in the car, and we ran back here instead.”

“You ever seen this woman before?”

“No,” Stiles says, but he’s got a pretty good idea who it was. “She was blonde. Maybe in her thirties? White. Slim build, I guess. She was wearing a dark jacket, and I didn’t get a look at the driver. I think it was a guy.”

It’s paltry, really, the language used to describe suspects. The woman’s face is burned onto his retinas, but his ability to translate it into words is almost non-existent.

“She had a necklace,” Stella says, and Stiles doesn’t even remember a necklace. “It was silver. It had a dog on it.”

Not a dog, Stiles is suddenly sure. A _wolf_.

There’s no doubt in his mind the woman was Kate Argent, and he’s going to trawl Allison’s Facebook later to made certain.

“And the license plate started with a six,” Stella adds. “I didn’t see the other numbers or letters through.”

Dad looks to Deaton.

“I’m sorry,” Deaton says. “By the time I got the door open, I only saw their tail lights.”

Stiles watches as Dad’s gaze is drawn to the bullet hole in Deaton’s window.   

Attempted abductions are rare, Stiles knows. And so are attempted abductions that end in attempted murder. Sooner or later Dad’s going to have to give voice to what must be a growing suspicion that Stiles and Stella are mixed up in something weird, and that they both know more than they’re telling him.

Stiles hopes it’s later.

“But what were you kids even doing here?” Dad asks, shaking his head helplessly. “I thought you were at home.”

“We, um…” And Stiles has no idea where to go with that.  

“They brought me a stray kitten,” Deaton says, rescuing him unexpectedly.

“You found a kitten?” Dad asks, his forehead creasing.

Stiles nods.

“It was lost and sad,” Stella says, making her eyes go big. “We couldn’t just let it go hungry, Dad! I’m calling it Matilda, and can we keep it, please?”

 

***

 

Matilda, thank god, is not an imaginary kitten, and Deaton is able to produce it from out the back. It is, however, a boy kitten. A little orange tabby boy. Stella sits on the floor and pets him and coos over him while Dad and Tara go over everything with Stiles and Deaton and the guy from the tire place again.

Despite Stella’s insistence on immediately adopting Matilda, Deaton tells her he’s not quite big enough to go home with anyone yet, but that if Dad is okay with it then they can come and collect him in a week or two.

Dad, Stiles thinks, would agree to absolutely anything at this point. Stiles can tell he’s shaken at how close his kids came to being seriously hurt—or worse—tonight.

He drives them home in the back of his cruiser, and Tara drives Stiles’s Jeep.

“If there’s _anything_ you need to tell me,” Dad begins, and then shakes his head and stops, like he can’t quite bring himself to ask. Like he can’t accuse his kids of lying, even though it’s got to be at least starting to point to that for him now.

Stiles swallows down his guilt, and plays dumb.

 

***

 

Dad heads back to work, because one thing about being the Sheriff, Stiles knows, is that it never stops. His kids were almost abducted tonight, but Peter Hale and his nurse are also missing, so Dad doesn’t get to stay home. There’s always something. And lately, in Beacon Hills, all those little somethings have been snowballing into bigger somethings. It’ll be an avalanche in a minute, Stiles thinks wildly as he locks the door behind Dad. An avalanche, and Stiles only hopes that the people he cares about aren’t caught in its path.

Who is he kidding though, really?

The avalanche has already begun, and theres’s no escaping it now.

 

***

 

Derek doesn’t answer any of his texts of phone calls. Not even when Stiles tells him that Kate Argent (thanks, Allison’s Facebook!) threatened him and Stella with a gun. Stiles tries not to feel the sting of betrayal.

Maybe Derek’s lost his phone.

Maybe Derek’s dead.

Okay, so Stiles would definitely prefer the first option to the second one, but he can’t deny the fact that the second option would also fully explain why Derek hasn’t answered. And Derek’s not exactly the guy with the best luck in the universe, is he? Who would be surprised if he was dead?

Stiles ignores the jab of pain in his gut that comes with even entertaining that possibility.

But it’s there.

He doesn’t sleep much that night.

 

***

 

Dad works through the night, and stops in for breakfast before heading out to work again.

“You go to school,” he says firmly. “You pick Stella up, and come straight back here afterwards. No going out for takeout, or trips to the mall, or kitten rescues, or _anything_.” He sighs, and rubs a hand over his forehead. “You’re not grounded, kiddo. This isn’t a punishment, okay? I’d just feel a hell of a lot better if I knew you kids were home, instead of gallivanting off around town.”

“That’s us,” Stiles says. “Pair of gallivanters.”

Stella snorts.

“We’ll come straight home,” Stiles says, and means it too. “No more running around town, I promise.”

“Well, except tonight,” Dad says.

Stiles goes completely blank.

“The dance, kiddo,” Dad reminds him. “You’re dropping Stella off with Melissa, remember? And you and Scott are going to the dance.”

Right.

Right, somewhere out there teenagers are having normal werewolf-less lives. Stiles used to be one of them, not that long ago. He even entertained ideas of asking Lydia to the dance—and constructed vivid fantasies where she actually said yes—and somehow he’d completely forgotten it was tonight.

“Oh,” he says, because he is not at all prepared. “Oh, _shit_.”

“I got your suit cleaned last week,” Dad tells him. “Also, language.”

“Mrs. McCall is going to show me how to make a blanket out of scrap material,” Stella says. “We were going to make it for my bear, but now we can get a basket and put it in it, so we’re ready for when we can bring Matilda home.”

“It’s a boy cat,” Dad says.

Stella looks at him expectantly.

Dad raises his eyebrows. “Matilda is a girl’s name.”

“Well, he doesn’t know that,” Stella points out. “He’s a cat.”

Dad considers that for a moment. “You know what? That’s a fair call, kiddo.”

Stella looks pleased.

“Be good at school,” Dad says to both of them. “Stay _safe_.”

He says that a lot, but there’s usually not such weight behind the words.

Stiles and Stella both stay in Dad’s hugs for a little longer than usual, and Stiles locks the door after he leaves.  

“Are you really going to the dance tonight?” Stella asks once the coast is clear.

“I guess,” Stiles says. “Like, we’ll act normal, right? And sooner or later everything will all blow over?”

Stella’s eight, and the look she gives him tells him that even she thinks that’s bullshit.

“We act normal,” Stiles says, as though repeating it will make it true. “And we just hope that Derek’s okay.”

“And Peter,” Stella says.

“What?”

“We hope that Peter’s okay too.”

“Peter has a body count, Stella.”

She shrugs. “But we’re not on it.”

Like that makes any difference.

Except maybe… maybe it does? Because Peter Hale could have killed them both back in that hospital room, but he didn’t, because they didn’t fit the pattern.

Neither did Laura Hale though, right?

Or maybe Stiles has just been looking at the wrong pattern this whole time.


	12. Chapter 12

The morning of the dance is gray and overcast. Stiles doesn’t give a fuck, to be honest, but he does spare a thought for Lydia and what rain does to her hair. He knows she’ll be glowering at weather like this for the dance.

With Dad already headed off to work, Stiles showers quickly. Stella bangs on the door halfway through, because of course she has to use the bathroom _now_ , and of course she can’t use the one downstairs. Stiles ignores her until she finally tromps away. Stiles climbs out of the shower and then shaves, not sure if he really has to or not, and inspects his face in the mirror. He has dark circles under his eyes, and water beading on the prickles of his hair. Maybe it’s time to grow the buzzcut out? Like, if he survives Peter Hale and the Argents and the absolute apocalypse that is those two forces colliding, maybe that’s something he’ll do. Maybe he should try being a normal teenager with normal teenage worries for a while. Maybe he and Lydia can bond over hair.

Stiles and his reflection regard one another dubiously for a moment, and then he scrubs his towel over his head and turns away from the mirror.

As much as he tries to distract himself with thoughts of the dance, or of potential new hairstyles, or of things that don’t really matter, Stiles finds himself thinking of Derek. Worrying about him. And as much as he tries to summon up a low burn of anger— _Derek still hasn’t answered his texts! What an asshole_!—he can’t help but worry that for some reason Derek can’t answer him.

And _can’t_ is a much more terrifying word than _won’t_.

Stiles and Stella eat cereal for breakfast and leave the dishes in the sink.

Stiles beats the school traffic to Stella’s school, but catches it at the high school. Nothing says chaos like a few hundred high school kids who haven’t figured out how to park yet. Stiles drums his fingers against the steering wheel of the Jeep while he waits for the line of traffic to move forward so he can snag a parking spot.

He catches a glimpse of Scott on his dirt bike as he parks, and hurries through the parking lot to catch him before he gets to the entrance of the school.

“Scott! Scotty!”

Scott turns and waits.

Stiles reaches him, and opens his mouth, but before he can spill out what happened last night, first at the hospital and then outside Deaton’s, Scott beats him to the punch.

“Dude!” Scott’s eyes are wide. “You won’t believe what happened last night!”

“What?”

“I saved Jackson from Derek Hale!”

Wait… _what?_

Because that doesn’t compute at all.

“What do you mean you saved Jackson from Derek?” Stiles asks, his forehead creasing. “What’s Jackson go to do with anything anyway?”

“Dude, Jackson’s figured it out!” Scott stares at him for a moment, and then lowers his voice. “The whole _werewolf_ thing.”

“Yeah, I get it. How the fuck did Jackson figure it out?” It’s a little annoying actually, since Stiles likes to pretend that Jackson is a total airhead. It’s only fair, since he looks like a male model. Nobody deserves to be rich and pretty _and_ smart. Especially not a dick like Jackson. “ _Jackson?_ ”

“I have no idea, man.”

Stiles might. “Did you do an awesome back flip during practice or something?”

“No!” Scott denial rings hollow, and he flushes. “Well, not a back flip! Anyway, suddenly getting good a lacrosse isn’t a decent reason to jump straight to werewolves.”

It’s a fair point, Stiles guesses, except Jackson didn’t jump straight there, did he? This time last week he’d accused Scott of being on steroids.

“So what happened last night?” Stiles asks. “With Derek?”

“I followed Jackson out to the old Hale house,” Scott says. “Dude, he wants the bite!”

“Derek can’t give him the bite.”

“Yeah, but Jackson doesn’t know that.” Scott draws them out of the way of a gaggle of approaching girls. “Anyway, I wouldn’t let him go in the house, and me and Derek fought, and then someone was shooting at us!”

“What?” Stiles feels a thread of panic tighten in his chest. “What time did all this happen?”

“I dunno. About six? Six-thirty?”

Right about the time that Stiles and Stella were Googling weird symbols, and Derek wasn’t answering his phone.

Stiles’s mouth feels dry suddenly. “Is Derek okay?”

“I think so,” Scott says, wrinkling his nose a little. He shrugs. “I guess.”

Shrugs, like it doesn’t matter, and Stiles hates him a little bit for that. Because Derek isn’t the bad guy, whatever Scott thinks. Derek is a victim in all this too, and he wishes Scott could that.

“So who was shooting at you?” he asks.

“I didn’t see them,” Scott says. “Hunters, I guess.”

Stiles shivers and thinks of the Kate Argent.

“Anyway, Derek pushed me and Jackson one way, and took off in the other direction. I think the hunters followed him?”

“Like, on purpose?”

Scott gives him a strange look. “Well, yeah. They’re hunters.”

“No, I mean did Derek lead them off on purpose?”

The expression on Scott’s face tells Stiles this is the first time he’s considered it. And then he shrugs again. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

Stiles scrubs a hand over his head. “Was Peter with him?”

“Who?”

“Peter Hale, his uncle,” Stiles says. “The _Alpha_.”

Scott’s jaw drops. “Dude, you know who the Alpha is?”

“Yeah.” Stiles waves away any potential follow-up questions. Like, _how_ , and _when did you find out_ , and _why didn’t you tell me?_ It’s been less than a day since he spoke to Scott, and it already feels like they’ve moved a million miles in opposite directions.

Last night Stiles thought this whole thing was an avalanche, and he’s right.

It’s picking up speed now, isn’t it?

He presses on. “So was Peter there?”

“I didn’t see him if he was. But Derek wouldn’t let Jackson in the house.”

Peter must have been there, Stiles thinks. And Derek was keeping Jackson away from him so he couldn’t turn him. It might have been a more effective strategy to let them meet, honestly, because who would want a douchebag like Jackson in their pack?

Even Peter Hale can’t be that crazy.

Stiles nods, and tries to focus. “Why didn’t you call me last night?” he asks, pushing down the guilt that asks him the same question.

Why didn’t he call Scott after he found out who the Alpha was?

After he and Stella were threatened by Kate Argent?

It just hadn’t occurred to him, and Stiles doesn’t want to look at it too closely because he’s afraid of what that means. They’ve been friends forever, through everything. There wasn’t supposed to be anything that could drive a wedge between them.

And maybe there isn’t.

Maybe they just need to catch their breath and regroup, right?

“I lost my phone,” Scott tells him. “This is going to sound really weird, but I know I had it in my pocket when the shooting started, then Derek pushed me, and then I didn’t have it anymore. Dude, I think Derek Hale stole my phone!”

_What?_

Although it’s not the weirdest thing he’s ever heard, is it? Maybe kleptomania is a side effect of lycanthropy. Because why the fuck not? Clearly the universe decided months ago that it didn’t have to make sense anymore.

“Sorry,” Scott says. “I would have called you, bro, if I could have.”

“It’s okay,” Stiles says, wishing he could say the same.

And then the bell rings, and they have to head inside before they’re late for homeroom.

 

***

 

Third period English and it hits him, and Stiles rolls his eyes at how long it took him.

Derek has lost his phone.

That’s why he stole Scott’s, and that’s why he couldn’t answer Stiles.

He sends a text to Scott’s number: _D? Call me._

He keeps his phone underneath his textbook so he can check to see if Derek answers.

He doesn’t.

 

***

 

After school Stiles collects Stella, and hurries home to get ready for the dance. He doesn’t really want to go—mostly because he hasn’t got a date and he’ll look like even more of a loser than ever—but tonight might be a good chance to catch Allison and see if she knows what the fuck her crazy aunt is up to. As long as he can figure out a way to ask without sounding too suspicious.

He drops Stella off at the McCall house, collects Scott, and they head for the school.

He wonders if Scott feels as stupid wearing a suit as he does, but he doesn’t ask. Scott looks way too excited to be meeting up with Allison at the dance, even though he’s not supposed to be going because he’s failing some classes.

Typical. Stiles would actually rather stay home and study, while Scott’s busting his ass to break the rules to go. Clearly they should have figured out some sort of alien body swap arrangement for the night.

The dance is exactly what Stiles thought it would be: awful music, warm punch, and startling amounts of streamers and balloons.

It’s not his scene at all.

Lydia looks gorgeous, of course, and she even manages a frosty smile when Stiles stammers that out when they cross paths at the refreshments table. Then Jackson looms in and escorts her away, looking at Stiles like he’s something he stepped in.

Scott spends most of the evening either furtively dancing with Allison, or hiding from Finstock and the other teachers.

Someone inevitably spikes the punch.

Stiles sits on the bleachers for a while, trying to look like he’s enjoying himself.

He’s not, and he’s pretty sure it shows.

In the middle of a schmaltzy love ballad, his gaze catches on Lydia as she walks towards the exit. Her silver dress is shining under the lights, and why isn’t she dancing with Jackson?

“Jackson?”

Stiles can’t hear her calling him over the music, but he sees her mouth his name.

Then, looking pissed, she strides outside.

Into the night.

Alone.

And no. Stiles can’t just let her do that. Not when he knows what’s out there.

Stiles pushes through the crowd of people dancing to follow her.  

 

***

 

“Lydia! Lydia!”

There’s mist laying on the lacrosse field when Stiles sees her.

She’s standing there, arms hugging herself, staring at the man crossing the field towards them. The mist parts in front of him, and his long jacket billows out behind.

It’s Peter Hale.

It’s the Alpha.

He stands in front of them, his fingers extending into claws.   

“I am so very tired,” he says, his lip curling to show his fangs, “of redheads who stink of magic.”

_What?_

Stiles grabs Lydia by the wrist and tugs her behind him. Her can hear her breath, fast and ragged, and her fingers clench into a fist in the back of his jacket.

“Where’s Derek?” Stiles demands, his voice cracking.

“I was going to ask you the exact same thing.” Peter tilts his head on an angle. “You’ll help me find him, won’t you, Stiles?”

“Yes,” Stiles says, his heart pounding fast. “If you let Lydia go back inside, I’ll help you find him. I think I know how.”

Peter Hale’s mouth curls into a smile. “Clever boy.”

Stiles lets go of Lydia’s wrist, and she runs.

She’s clever too.


	13. Chapter 13

Peter Hale drives a 2009 Hyundai that doesn’t belong to him. There’s a woman’s cardigan on the back seat, and a Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital lanyard hanging out of the glove compartment. The ID it’s attached to is hidden inside the glove compartment, but Stiles has no doubt whose car it is: the nurse’s. The redhead who smelled of magic.

He thinks of Lydia.

A siren, maybe. A goddess, certainly, even if she’s just an ordinary human. But she’s not, is she? She’s something too, according to Peter. Stiles wonders if he’ll live long enough to discover what.

He curls his fingers around the seatbelt, and tries not to steal glances at Peter Hale.

He isn’t sure where Peter is taking him.

He’s too afraid to open his mouth and ask.

Rains spatters on the windshield, smudging the passing lights. They’re a few blocks over from downtown, achingly close to the Sheriff’s Department. If they stop at the next red light, maybe…

But the light stays green as they cruise through, and even if Stiles managed to get out of the car without Peter grabbing him, what are the chances he could outrun an Alpha werewolf? And maybe there’s a tiny part of him that hopes Peter really is looking for Derek, and that’s all he wants from Stiles is his help, not his life. He doesn’t know why Peter would want to kill him—well, apart from the fact that Stiles witnessed him murder the nurse—but that’s always been the problem, hasn’t it? Stiles hasn’t cracked the pattern.

He knows why Peter killed the people who killed his family. He knows, and he can’t pretend to be appalled or anything. If anyone hurt Dad and Stella… well, Stiles wouldn’t hold back either.

But Laura Hale doesn’t fit the pattern.

Stiles watches the lanyard hanging from the glove compartment swing back and forth as they round a corner, and a flash of memory hits him. He’s eight, and Mom and Dad are laying on their bed, and Stiles is wedged between them like a little tick. Mom has her wedding ring on a chain, holding it above her belly—that’s where the baby lives!—and if it swings one way it’s a girl, and if it swings another way it’s a boy, and it’s—

“An old wives tale,” Dad says, but he’s laughing.

“Hush, you,” Mom tells him. “I’m not old!”

The ring begins to swing, and it’s like _magic_ , and Stiles bounces up and down excitedly when Mom tells him the baby is a girl.

“ _Might_ be,” Dad says. “It’s fifty-fifty!”

And Mom just laughs and says, “We’ll see.”

The lanyard swings back and forth, back and forth, and Stiles thinks of Stella. He thinks of her at Melissa’s house tonight, making a blanket for the kitten. He thinks of her standing on the top of the car in the parking light on student teacher night, a tiny, solitary figure, brave in the face of danger. He thinks of her eating breakfast with Derek, and her bright, delighted smiles that were echoed faintly, almost unwillingly, in the quirk of Derek’s mouth. He thinks of her reading _Matilda_ to a comatose man and not knowing he was a monster.

The car turns into a parking garage. It’s almost entirely empty at this hour. The office workers who use the place between nine and five are at home, eating dinner, or tucking their kids in, or curling up on the couch to watch TV.

They drive down to the first level underground. Yellow fluorescent lights flicker overhead. Peter pulls the car into a parking space, and turns the engine off.

Stiles tries to remember how to breathe.

“Now,” Peter says, and his eyes flash red, “you said you could help me find my nephew?”

“I have an idea,” Stiles says. “I’m going to need a computer.”

“There’s one in the trunk.”

 

***

 

The computer isn’t the only thing in the trunk. The nurse’s body is there as well. Stiles feels like a tomb raider or something, levering the laptop out from under the woman’s stiff hand. Like he’s expecting her reanimated corpse to grab for it at any second.

It’s the strangest feeling in the world.

Not the faint dissociation. That’s to be expected, probably.

No, it’s the way that his brain tries to tell him that _she_ might be the monster in this scenario, and not the man standing next to him. 

Maybe it’s his brain trying to protect him.

But maybe it’s more than that?

Stiles doesn’t trust himself enough right now to tell the difference.

 

***

 

“There’s this app,” Stiles says, once the trunk is closed and the nurse’s body is hidden from sight again. “I think Derek took Scott’s phone, so we can use the app to track it.”

Peter prowls behind him, never more than a step away, back and forth, back and forth.

Stiles’s fingers jitter over the keys of the laptop.

“His user name is 'Allison'?” Peter asks, and Stiles can hear the contempt dripping from his tone. And then: “His password is  _also '_ Allison'?”

Stiles summons more sass than he feels: “Still want him in your pack?”

There’s a huff of hot breath against the back of his neck that might almost be laughter.

 

 

***

 

Scott’s phone is in the Preserve.

“I don’t get it,” Stiles says. “He’s being kept at your old house?”

“Not at,” Peter says. “Under. I know exactly where he is.”

“Last night,” Stiles says, keeping his gaze fixed on the screen.  “Last night Kate Argent tried to get me and Stella into her car. She had a gun.”

He hears Peter’s low growl. “What time was this?”

“About eight.” Stiles dares turn his head, and catch Peter’s intense red gaze. “Did she have Derek then?”

“Interesting,” says Peter. “And no.”

“Why is it interesting?”

“Because that means she’s hunting you for bait, little rabbit,” Peter tells him. “There aren’t many things that would get my nephew to step into her trap, but your little hummingbird heartbeat just might.” He lifts his nose, like he can smell Stiles’s fear. He can, probably. “You’re lucky she found him, or she’d still be prowling for you.”

“I don’t think—” But his protestation that Derek doesn’t really give a shit about him are cut off when Peter grips his wrist suddenly, and turns him so that he’s pushed back against the trunk of the car.

“Humans,” Peter says, his lips curling. “So fragile. Tell me, Stiles. Would you like the bite? If it doesn't kill you - and it could - you'll become like us.”

“Like you?”

Peter’s mouth quirks into a smile. “Yes, a werewolf. Would you like me to draw you a picture? That first night in the woods, I took Scott because I needed a new pack. It could've easily been you. You'd be every bit as powerful as him. No more standing by his side, watching him become stronger, and quicker, more popular, watching him get the girl. You'd be equals. Maybe more. Yes or no?”

And Stiles’s brain shorts out for a second there.

For a second he thinks of what it would be like to be strong, superhero strong. To not be the breakable, bruisable human constantly getting pushed around by things bigger and tougher than he is.

And then he thinks of Stella and Dad.

“No,” he says, well aware that there’s nothing he can do except say that one word. There’s no way he can stop it if Peter wants it to happen. “I don’t want to be like you.”

For a moment he thinks he’s crossed the line—it won’t be the first time his mouth has run away with him—but Peter only smiles. “Do you know what I heard just then? Your heart beating slightly faster over the words ‘I don't want.’ You may believe that you're telling me the truth, but you are lying to yourself.”

Maybe.

Maybe it is a lie.

Or maybe it was fear that made his heart jump.

Fear that Peter will bite him anyway.

“Don’t you understand yet?” Peter asks, tilting his head to one side. “I’m not the bad guy here.”

There’s a dead body in the trunk that tells a different story though.

Peter finally uncurls his fingers from Stiles’s wrist, and lets it drop.

“Give me your keys,” he says, and what?

Stiles digs around in his pocket and holds the Jeep keys out. Watches as Peter Hale curls his hand around them and crushes them.

 _Crushes_ them.

His smile seems a little rueful as he drops the keys back into Stiles’s palm. “Goodbye, Stiles.”

And then he’s gone.

He didn’t kill Stiles, and he’s gone.

And Stiles has to run the three miles back to school.

 

***

 

“Stiles!”

It’s not Scott who grabs him by the arm the second he bursts back into the school gym—where is Scott anyway?—it’s Lydia. And she strong-arms him as easily as any jock, dragging him to the nearest wall and shoving him against it.

“What the hell happened to you?” she demands. “What the hell is going on?”

“Nothing,” he says, aware of Jackson looming up on them. “It’s nothing. Just stay out of it, okay?”

And then Jackson’s right there, and he’s giving Stiles a knowing look, and taking Lydia by the hand. “Yeah, let the little weirdo have his little secrets, Lydia.”

Like Jackson isn’t playing with fire as well, but as long as he keeps Lydia out of it, Stiles doesn’t care.

“Stay out of it,” he says again, this time to Jackson. “Just stay out of it.”

 _You wouldn’t want to be one of them_ , he wants to tell him, _if you_ knew.

“Freak,” Jackson says, and leads Lydia away.

Stiles wipes his sweaty palms on his pants, and checks his phone. No texts. No calls. And where the hell is Scott?

The avalanche hits tonight, Stiles has no doubt. Peter, and Derek, and the Argents—it’s all about to come to a head out at the old Hale house in the Preserve. And Stiles wants to be there. He wants to help Derek. He doesn’t care about anyone else, but he wants Derek to get out alive. But there’s too much crazy, and too many people with fangs and bullets, and Stiles wants to help, but he also doesn’t want to be there to see it all go wrong. He doesn’t want to see Derek get hurt, or worse.

He’s small and selfish, probably, but he’s also scared.

He’s so, so scared.

He sends a text to Allison: _You and Scott stay out of the Preserve tonight, ok? Promise._

And then he sends another one to his Dad: _Can’t start the Jeep. Can you come pick me up?_

Maybe he’ll tell Dad he dropped the keys down a garbage disposal or something.

He goes outside and sits in the cool, and get away from the music, and the dancing, and the people, and all this _bullshit_. He hates it. He hates himself more.

Dad texts back after a few minutes: _On my way now._

Stiles bows his head and waits.


	14. Chapter 14

“Hey, stinkface!” Stella yells out the window of Dad’s cruiser as it pulls in. “Look what I made!”

She waves a square of patchwork blanket at him.

Dad gets out to let him in the back of the cruiser. “You okay, kid? You look a little…” He makes some sort of gesture with his hand that Stiles can’t parse. “Peaky.”

“I’m just tired,” Stiles lies, reaching for his seatbelt.

He hates riding in the back of the cruiser. It smells of feet and antiseptic wipes, and Stiles’s skin starts to itch whenever he thinks about some of the people who’ve ridden back here, and some of the bodily fluids Dad has had to hose out. There’s only so much that regular applications of Lysol can do, after all.

“How was the dance?” Dad asks, climbing back into his seat.

He doesn’t ask why Stiles wants to come home early, and Stiles figures it’s because he thinks Stiles got shot down by some girl, or laughed at by some jock, or looked around to discover Scott had vanished with Allison and that he had no friends. So the usual, basically. But it’s a relief not to be getting grilled over it. Not that Dad would. Just… Stiles doesn’t want to talk about his night at all.

Dad meets his gaze in the rearview. “You sure you’re feeling alright, kiddo?”

“Yeah.” Stiles forces a smile. “It was just, um, really loud in there. I’ll take an Advil when we get home, and I’ll be fine.”

Stella turns around in her seat, looking contrite. “Sorry I called you a stinkface. I didn’t know you had a headache.”

Stiles snorts. “So it’s okay to call me a stinkface if I’m feeling okay?”

She flashes him a cheeky grin. “You can take it.”

Dad snorts too, and pulls out of the parking lot.

Stiles leans back against the vinyl seat. God, he hopes Derek is okay. He hopes that Scott and Allison stay out of the Preserve. He hopes that Jackson pulls his head out of his ass and keeps both himself and Lydia out of this entire mess.

He’s guilty as well, even though he can’t think of a single conceivable thing he could do to help Derek right now. Stiles is 147 pounds of pale skin and fragile bones. Sarcasm is his only defense, and he’s pretty sure it’d be totally useless in attack.

He closes his eyes.

 _“Don’t you understand yet?”_ Peter Hale says. _“I’m not the bad guy here.”_

Stiles lurches forward, eyes flashing open.

“Kiddo?” Dad asks.

“Huh?” It feels like his heart is beating too fast, like frantic wings against the cage of his ribs. “I’m okay.”

Derek’s probably not though, is he?

God.

Stiles hates himself. He squeezes his eyes shut again, and when he opens them Stella has twisted around so she’s staring at him through the grill. Her dark eyes are wide with concern, and Stiles remembers that he’s doing this for _her_. He’s keeping out of this for _her_. For Stella, and for Dad, because they are the two most important people in the universe, and Stiles would never forgive himself if anything happened to them.

If anything happened to Stella and Dad, Stiles doesn’t think he’d be able to find the will to keep on living.

He doesn’t know how Derek’s done it.

And there’s his guilt again, writhing in his gut like something black and cold and sickening.

His eyes sting.

“Stiles,” Dad begins, looking at him in the rearview mirror again. “Son, are you sure—”

And then the radio cuts him off.

“Dispatch to Sheriff Stilinski.”

Dad grabs the radio before Stella can. “Go ahead, dispatch.”

“Sheriff,” the voice on the other end of the radio says, “we’ve got reports of trespassers in the Preserve at the old Hale house. You’re our closest unit.”

Stiles blood runs cold.

“Sorry about the headache, kiddo,” Dad says, and leans forward to flick on the sirens.

Stiles grips the seat belt tightly and tries not to throw up.

He and Stella know the drill. If they’re in the car when Dad gets a call he has to go to, they _stay_ in the car. That is _not_ negotiable. It doesn’t happen often, and it’s never as exciting as Stiles had hoped when he was younger. Mostly it’s sitting in the car for ten minutes while Dad gets a sitrep from whoever is already on scene, and then he’ll drive them home or to the station—whichever is closest—and drop them off before he heads back, or get someone else to give them a ride. It’s not like Dad dumps them at active shooter scenes or anything like that. Once, Stiles had to sit in the car for forty-five minutes while Dad cleared an accident scene they’d come across, and even then the initial sense of urgency and excitement Stiles had felt had faded sometime between his third and fourth inspection of the contents of Dad’s glove compartment.

Except tonight it _is_ something big.

Dad just doesn’t know it yet.

“Probably just kids messing around in that old house,” Dad says to the dispatcher, over the whine of the siren. “Anyone else on the way?”

“No, sir,” the dispatcher says. “Rodriguez and Miller are at a disturbance, and Parrish is at an alarm on Main.”  

“Okay,” Dad says. “I’m about eight minutes out. I’ll take a look.” He puts the radio back in the cradle. “You okay back there, Stiles?”

“Yeah.”

They leave the last of the streetlights behind as they turn onto Telegraph Road. Stiles remembers Derek stumbling out in front of his Jeep that day, and Stella screaming and spilling all her sushi.

“Dad?”

“Stiles?”

“Dad, there’s some stuff I have to tell you.”

It’s a weird sort of relief to have this decision taken from him. Dad’s involved now, right? So Stiles has to tell him everything. Except how the fuck does he start? _Hey, Dad, remember that time Stella said I’d let a werewolf in the house? Funny story…_ Jesus, no. That’s not going to fly at all.

“What stuff?” Dad glances at him in the rearview, and then back to the road again. “What’s going on?”

Stiles sucks in a breath.

He’s got eight minutes, right?

Eight minutes to think of a way to tell his dad everything, without sounding totally fucking insane in the meantime.

Eight minutes to somehow break it to his dad that the world he’s actually living in is very, very different to the one he thought he knew.

And—Stiles knows from experience—that’s a hell of a lot to shoehorn into eight lousy minutes.

Except he doesn’t have eight minutes at all.

Because as they turn onto the road into the Preserve, there’s already a dark SUV barreling towards them around a narrow curve, lights on blinding high beam.

Dad slams on the brakes.

Stella screams.

And Stiles doesn’t even have time to brace before the SUV slams into the cruiser.

 

***

 

Everything comes to him in flashes.

Stiles blinks his eyes open. He can hear Stella wailing, and that’s good. That’s good, right? Because she’s making noise. Dead kids don’t make noise.

He closes his eyes.

“Stiles? _Stiles_?”

Forces them open again.

He’s hanging from his seatbelt at a weird angle. Like the car is maybe sideways in a ditch at the side of the road or something? There’s… there’s a tree wedged against his door.

The light is weird.

It’s too bright, and it’s coming from… from the headlights of the SUV still up on the road. The single headlight. Maybe the other one got knocked out.

Stiles knows how it feels.

“Stella, sweetheart,” Dad says. “Open your door. Open your door and get out.”

No, because you’re not supposed to move after an accident, are you? When there could be spinal damage and shit like that? Stiles is too woozy to try to articulate all of that though, but there’s a low buzz of annoyance in his gut because Dad is a police officer. He should _know_ that kind of stuff. That’s like his bread and butter, isn’t it?

“Stella,” Dad is saying. “Open your door, kid. Open your door and climb out.”

Open her door and topple out, probably. She’s got gravity on her side. Stiles doesn’t. He’s got that dumb tree blocking his door. He’s going to have to crawl out the hard way. He’s going to have to go _up_ , and like it’s not like he’s at a really bad angle or it’s Mount Everest or anything, he just doesn’t have the energy to move at the moment. Or the coordination.

“Stella,” Dad says again. “Hurry!” 

Stiles hears the frantic undertone in Dad’s voice for the first time, and that’s when he smells it.

Gasoline.

His heart beats faster.

Okay, okay, so yeah, get away from the potential fireball first. Worry about spinal injuries after.

He squints, but everything is too bright and too hazy at the same time.

Metal groans, and something makes a screeching sound.

“Stiles? Can you hear me, kid?”

Stiles makes a grunting sound he thinks is assent.

“I’m going out Stella’s door, kiddo, and then I’m coming to get you, okay? Okay?”

Stiles grunts again.

It’s quiet for a while then, which is a stupid reason to doze off, but Stiles thinks that maybe he does. When he opens his eyes again, Dad and Stella are gone, and he’s still in the car.

Where’s Dad?

He squints, and makes an effort to haul his brain back online, and he can hear people talking outside? That’s definitely Dad’s voice, clipped and urgent, a man with a plan, and there’s someone else as well? Another guy, maybe, and a woman?

And then a shape looms up in the oh-so-far-away window.

“Stiles? Cover your face, son.”

Stiles dumbly presses his non-compliant hands more-or-less to his face.

He squeezes his eyes shut.

He hears the sound of the window shattering, and glass rains down on him. He feels dizzy for some reason, and he thinks he fades out again for a moment. And then he hears voices again, and they’re raised suddenly, and Dad is saying in his cop-voice: “Put the weapon down. Put it down, and step away.”

 _Dad_.

Stiles tries to move, but it’s too quickly or something, because his world tips suddenly and everything turns black, like the neurotic little asshole who lives in his brain just flipped off the switch. 

When he opens his eyes again he can’t hear any voices at all, and it’s dark.

The SUV has gone.

It must be minutes, only minutes, but he has no way to tell.

Maybe it’s only been minutes, but where’s Dad gone? Where’s Stella?

He fumbles with his seatbelt, and manages to release it at last. Then he crawls up the seat towards the smashed window. Drags himself through without quite knowing how, ignoring the cuts on his hands. He tumbles onto the verge of the road, and crawls up.

Climbs to his feet once he reaches the road.

“Dad? Stella?”

There’s no answer.

The road leading deeper into the Preserve is dark and narrow.

Stiles stumbles down it in the direction of the Hale house. He can’t think properly. Can’t move properly. He feels like he’s going to be sick. His face is wet with tears and blood, and he’s all alone.

“Derek? Derek! Derek, help me!”  

The darkness swallows him.


	15. Chapter 15

The branches of the trees make strange shifting shadows on the surface of the road in the moonlight: lines and shapes that twist and move only to realign into something new. Stiles thinks of runes, of the pattern on the piece of bone that the nurse had and that Deaton snapped. Are the shapes the shadows make magic too? Is Stiles being engulfed in a constantly moving tide of spells and incantations, natural and random like the waves of the ocean? He feels like maybe he is—half under a spell and half drowning.

He’s dizzy, so dizzy, and his limbs feel weird and heavy, and they don’t move in the right ways.

There are monsters in the woods, he remembers suddenly, and wants to cry.

He needs to find Derek, to…

So that Derek can help him find Dad and Stella.

He’s not even sure how his brain makes that connection, but it’s there, and it’s about the only thing that feels solid right now. He presses a hand to the pocket of his pants, and wonders why he can’t feel the piece of bone that Stella found in Peter’s hospital room, and then he remembers these aren’t his usual pants, and that Deaton snapped the bone anyway.

The lines on the road look like the runes on the bone.

“Derek?” he calls, stumbling forward. “Derek!”

He loses the name on a ragged sob.

And then there’s light, and Stiles is dozy as a fat bumbling moth caught in its beam. He turns, squinting, and puts his hand out to steady himself but finds nothing except air.

He stumbles again, and this time someone catches him.

“ _Stilinski_?”

Stiles squints up into a stupidly handsome face he’s always wanted to punch.

What… what the fuck is _Jackson_ doing here?

 

***

 

Stiles gets blood and dirt all over the back seat of Jackson’s fancy silver Porsche. Lydia is with him, dabbing his face worriedly with something gauzy and a little bit stiff. Like a scarf or something? But a pretty glittery scarf girls wear with formal dresses. There’s probably a special name for it, but Stiles can’t remember it now.

Lydia looks like a princess. He tries to tell her this, and the words come out wrong.

“You need to go to the hospital,” Lydia says.

“No.” Stiles bats her hand away. “Derek.”

“Stilinski,” Jackson says. “What the fuck happened to your dad’s car?”  
Like, Stiles is the one with the concussion, but even he knows that’s the wrong question to be asking. Jackson should be asking what happened to Stiles’s _dad_ , shouldn’t he?

Lydia’s eyes are wide with worry.

She gets it.

She knows.

“I need Derek,” Stiles manages. “Derek will find my Dad and Stella.”

Lydia’s short, sharp intake of breath is the loudest sound in the world.

Jackson starts the Porsche, and they continue on into the woods.

 

***

 

The old Hale house is a ruin. A skeleton. The bones are there, but it’s a dead thing. The moonlight shines down on the charred walls. It looks like something out of a horror movie. And it is, Stiles thinks. It’s Derek’s horror movie. His burned down house with his sister’s grave out the back. All his ghosts and nightmares must come from here, made all the more monstrous because at one time this house must have been beautiful. And at one time it must have been filled with the laugher of the people that Derek loved.

There’s a black SUV parked out the front of the house. Why does everyone in this town drive black SUVs anyway? And there’s a man standing there, dressed in black, and he looks like he’s had the absolute shit kicked out of him. There’s blood on his face, and he’s gripping his side like he’s holding the pieces together.

Stiles knows how he feels.

It’s Chris Argent, Allison’s dad.

“What the _fuck_?” Jackson asks in a low voice. “Is he a werewolf too?”

Jesus. Jackson really hasn’t got any fucking idea, has he? He really shouldn’t have come out here tonight—Stiles _told_ him not to—but at the same time it’s good that he ignored Stiles so that Stiles didn’t collapse in a heap on the road a half mile back.

Stiles stumbles out of the car, Lydia and Jackson following.  

“Where are they?” Stiles wavers, and puts a bloody hand on the hood of the Porsche to steady himself. “Where are they?”

He’s not even sure who he means. Derek and Peter, or Dad and Stella?

“Did you kill them?” he demands, staggering closer to Argent. “Where _are_ they?”

Chris Argent catches his gaze and holds it. “Gone,” he says, his voice rasping like sandpaper, and there’s a good chance he’s as physically fucked up right now as Stiles. “They got away.”

Stiles hears a low whining noise. It takes a moment to realize it’s coming from him.

“Stiles,” Chris Argent says. “What happened to you?”

Stiles blinks slowly. “Mrs. Phillips did.”

Mrs. Phillips is six hundred years old and lives on Telegraph Road. This is all her fault, actually, because she always calls the police if she thinks kids are going down to the old Hale house at night to “make trouble”, by which she means smoke weed and have sex or anything else that Republican Jesus would disapprove of. Stiles is pretty sure that Mrs. Phillips is glued to her TV most of the time, but god help anyone who tries to drive into the private road leading to the old Hale house during a commercial.

A whole fucking vendetta of werewolves and hunters going on for years out of sight of the police, and some old woman running her own personal Neighborhood Watch in _Jeopardy_ ad breaks accidentally blows the whole thing wide open.

Like, how is this even real life?

Everything comes down to chance though, doesn’t it? Chance and dumb luck. There aren’t any rules. The universe is nothing but chaos, a maelstrom, and anyone can get swept away at any second. Stiles knows that better than most.

He’s drowning right now, isn’t he?

“Stiles,” Chris Argent says again, and steps forward.

And that’s when Stiles hears the growl. It’s close. It’s _loud_.

He turns around, Lydia catching his elbow before he faceplants, and sees the animal stepping out of the trees into the moonlight.

It’s a wolf. It’s huge, and it’s coming right towards Stiles.

And then it’s shifting, changing, and it’s a man, and Stiles’s scant composure shatters when he sees the moonlight hit the angles and planes of that familiar face, and he stumbles forward, tears running down his face.

“Derek!”

It’s a cry of both relief and heartbreak.

Because Derek is here, and Derek is alive, but Dad and Stella are _gone_. 

“Derek!”

He staggers, stumbles again, and Derek catches him as he falls.

 

***

 

“Wake up, Stiles,” Derek tells him softly. “Open your eyes.”

Derek is framed in starlight.

Stiles blinks up at him. His head hurts a little less than it did before, and it feels a little clearer. Derek’s hand is cradling the back of Stiles’s neck, his fingers rubbing the soft bristles of his hair. It feels nice. Stiles feels fuzzy again, but not in a nauseous way.

Clearly some time has passed, because Derek is wearing pants now. Which is kind of a shame, and also kind of weird, because they’re BHHS lacrosse sweats, and they might have come out of the trunk of Jackson’s Porsche.

Lydia and Jackson are standing close by, and Chris Argent is kneeling beside Stiles and Derek, a first aid kit open.

Stiles flinches at the smell of an antiseptic wipe a fraction before it touches his face. It’s wet and clammy and it stinks.

Also, Derek is growling again, a low, rumbling sound as Chris Argent touches Stiles.

“Someone took Dad and Stella,” Stiles says. “They were leaving from here. They hit Dad’s cruiser.”

Derek’s gaze fixes on Chris Argent. He grinds out, “Kate.”

Chris Argent’s mouth presses into a thin line.

“What happened though?” Stiles asks. “Peter… he was coming to get you. We tracked Scott’s phone and it said you were here. How did she get away if Peter was coming to get you?”

The Alpha’s a fucking _killing_ machine, with the body count to prove it.

“He got away,” Derek says, and another laden gaze passes between him and Chris Argent. “He was going to kill her, but Chris got in the way.”

They’re on first name terms? Weird.

“I saved your life, you mean,” Chris Argent snaps right back.

“You saved _hers_.”

“I told you. I don’t want any bloodshed.” Chris Argent shakes his head. “He’s _feral_.”

Derek’s eyes flash, but he doesn’t argue the point.

Also, fuck Chris Argent. Because if he doesn’t want any bloodshed, he’s about six years too late to the party, isn’t he?

“He needs putting down,” Chris Argent says. “He killed your sister, didn’t he?”

Derek’s fingers twitch against the back of Stiles’s neck but he doesn’t flinch. “That’s pack business, not yours.”

“Killed your sister,” Stiles echoes faintly, squinting at the shifting branches in the trees, lit from behind by moonlight.

Shapes, lines, runes.

And then the entire Preserve seems to hold its breath, as a man steps through the trees at the edge of the clearing. Even in silhouette, there’s no mistaking his swagger. No mistaking the way a predator moves.

Lydia gasps, gripping Jackson’s hand tightly.

Chris Argent drops the antiseptic wipe and reaches for the firearm in his thigh holster.

Derek growls lowly and leans over Stiles, shielding him, his claws out.

And Peter Hale moves closer.

Stiles blinks, and sees the runes again.

Hears the snap of Deaton breaking the thin piece of bone.

Remembers Laura Hale’s body, buried here, or at least the clean-cut torso, her gravesite circled in wolfsbane.

And just like that the pattern makes sense. Laura never fit because Laura didn’t _belong_.

“Peter didn’t kill Laura,” he says. “The nurse did. If Peter had killed her, she would have had been torn apart, not cut. If Peter had killed her, the nurse wouldn’t have needed that magic token to make sure the Alpha spark went to him.”

Derek’s eyes are wide. His bare chest expands rapidly as he pulls in a sharp breath. He stares at Peter as though he’s seeing him for the first time. As though his world had flipped.

Stiles’s reaches for Derek’s free hand, and squeezes it. He opens his mouth and says something he never thought he would: “Peter’s not the bad guy here.”

Peter moves into the moonlight. There’s blood on his clothes. His claws are extended.

“Clever boy,” he says, his voice low. “I knew you were.”

“Yeah.” Stiles struggles to sit up, Derek helping him. “Kate couldn’t get to you in the hospital because of the nurse, right? Because she had some mojo that was keeping you on a sort leash—pardon the expression—and it was also keeping hunters away. She’s the one who killed Laura, because she wanted an Alpha attack dog, and she already had you in her control.”

Peter tilts his head. “Wolves should never be chained, Stiles. We don’t like it.”

He’s still at least ninety percent unhinged sociopath, Stiles figures, but Stella was right about him, wasn’t she? She and Stiles aren’t on his murder to-do list. It’s more comforting that it should be, but screw that. Why shouldn’t Stiles have a killer on his side? A killer might be exactly what it takes.

And—the last piece of the puzzle slots together for him—it’s because of Peter that Kate took Dad and Stella anyway.

“You said Kate tried to take me as bait,” he says. “But you were wrong.”

The look on Peter’s face—half curious, half scornful—tells Stiles he doesn’t hear that very often.

Stiles pushes on. “It’s not Derek she wants. Well, she did, but only to get to _you_. And now she’s got Stella and my dad.”

“She has Stella?” Peter’s lip draws back, showing his fangs. His eyes flash red.

Derek’s hand is warm on the back of Stiles’s neck.

The murder in Peter’s gaze is even warmer. 


	16. Chapter 16

Stiles drinks half a bottle of water from the stash in Jackson’s car, and uses the rest to clean his face and hands. His head has cleared a little now, making room for a dozen different bodily aches and pains to make themselves known. Some are sharper than others, but Stiles doesn’t think anything’s broken. His chest hurts, and he figures he’ll have a hell of a bruise from the seatbelt this time tomorrow, but it’s nothing worse than he’s copped at lacrosse practice in the past.

He sits on the front steps of the burned-out house, clutching his water bottle. Lydia sits beside him, dabbing at the cuts on his hands occasionally with one of the antiseptic wipes she took out of Chris Argent’s first aid kit.

Jackson sits on the lowest step, his suit jacket unbuttoned and his tie loose.

Crazy to think that the school dance is probably still going on.

“You need to go to the hospital,” Lydia tells him. “You have a concussion.”

Stiles swallows. “I need to find my family.”

Lydia presses her mouth together into a disapproving moue, but she doesn’t argue.

What’s the hospital going to tell Stiles anyway? That he needs to rest? Not going to happen.

He watches the interplay between the wolves and Chris Argent. Derek and Peter stand close together, loose limbed, ready for action. Chris Argent’s orbit intersects with theirs. Not aligned, exactly, but no longer on a collision course. They are making space for one another. Stiles imagines lines drawn around the three of them, moving and reshaping as loyalties and alliances shift, as things that were unknown become known.

Laura was the piece that never fit, and Stiles discovering why hasn’t just changed things between Peter and Derek, he can tell. Chris Argent’s glances at Peter are wary and guarded, but no longer openly hostile.

“So at some point very soon dispatch is going to call my dad and wonder why he doesn’t answer,” Stiles says, swallowing around the painful lump in his throat. The Hales and Chris Argent stop to look at him. “They’ll send backup, and they’ll find the car. And then the whole fucking department will be called out looking for him. For us. So unless everyone wants to answer a bunch of questions from Beacon Hills’ finest, we need to not be here.”

They have to act fast, Stiles is sure of it. And trying to explain the whole werewolf thing to Dad’s deputies isn’t going to speed anything up at all. It’s just going to lead to questions that Stiles can’t begin to have answers to, and possibly an unwilling stay in Eichen House.

Derek stares up at him.  There’s an openness to his expression that Stiles hasn’t seen before, and he hopes that he never forgets. Because, whatever else happens tonight, Stiles did that. Stiles gave him back his uncle, his packmate, his Alpha.

Stiles shifts his gaze to Peter. “Can you find them?”

“They’re bait,” Peter says simply. “They’re meant to be found.”

Stiles likes Peter’s sharp edges and sharper pragmatism. He doesn’t trust them, but he likes them. He understands them. In a crazy world, somehow Peter Hale makes sense.

“What happened with Laura?” he asks, lifting his chin.

“We fought,” Peter says simply. “I remember that much. She tried to control me, but she couldn’t. I wasn’t hers to control.” His gaze slides to Lydia, and narrows, and then back to Stiles.

Redheads who stink of magic, Stiles thinks.

Peter rolls his shoulders. “I had no memory of killing her, but she was dead and I was an Alpha, and what was I supposed to think? Any time that voice inside my skull told me that I would never hurt her, I called it guilt and shut it down. But then Stella found the talisman.”

Stiles has possibly given something back to Peter Hale tonight as well.

“That’s when you knew,” Stiles says. “That’s why you killed the nurse.”

Peter’s top lip lifts, half a smirk, half a growl. “It turns out her hold on me wasn’t quite as unbreakable as she thought.”

Stiles nods, and then lifts his hand to his head because _ow_.

Derek pads barefoot up the steps. The moonlight shines on the planes of his torso, and wow, how did Stiles ever take so long to realize he was bi? Except it’s not a sexual kind of thrill that jolts through him when Derek sits down beside him. It’s more than that. It goes deeper. It goes all the way to feelings Stiles isn’t used to extending beyond his immediate family: he looks at Derek and he feels safe, and protected, and _loved_. He hardly fucking knows the guy, not really, but it’s there.

Derek sits down and reaches out and cups Stiles’s jaw with his warm hand. Then he moves it to the back of Stiles’s neck, cradling the base of his skull, and Stiles feels all those floaty feelings he felt before.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking your pain,” Derek says softly.

And something about that feels so overwhelming that Stiles’s eyes sting, and when he blinks tears slide down his cheeks.

It’s confirmation, he thinks.

He stumbled here screaming Derek’s name, begging for Derek’s help, and he was _right_. He was right.

Derek’s here for him.

He leans in as Derek does the same.

They rest their foreheads together, and Stiles closes his eyes.

He hears the rustle of fabric as Lydia stands up and moves down the steps to sit next to Jackson. He hears the crunch of dead leaves as Chris Argent paces back and forth. He hears the whisper of the wind through the trees.

But he keeps his eyes closed for just a moment longer, because Derek is here, and Derek is helping him, and Derek is strong.  

When he opens them again, Stiles feels strong too.

 

***

 

“Kate’s staying at my house,” Chris Argent says. “She wouldn’t have gone back there. But there’s a storage facility over on Henderson Street that she might know. I use it for my work sometimes.”

Peter snorts.

“What?”

“You might know,” Peter says. “But how would _I_? The bait’s for me, soldier boy, not you. Do you even have a brain in that skull of yours, or does Victoria keep it in her purse alongside your balls?”

Woah. Stiles’s jaw drops.

Chris curls his fingers into fists. “So how would Kate set a trap for _you_ , Hale?”

“Yes, that is the correct question, Christopher,” Peter says with a disarming smile Stiles doesn’t buy for a second. “Well done. But first of all, why did you even come out here tonight?”

“I followed Kate.” Chris winces as he leans down and scoops the first aid kit up off the ground. “I was worried about Allison. Worried Kate was trying to drag her into the family business, and we never wanted that for Ally. I still am worried about her.”

Jackson snorts.

Chris turns to glare at him. “What?”

“It’s the night of the dance,” Jackson says. “Allison and that douchebag McCall are probably fucking like rabbits by now at the Value Inn.”

Like, Jackson is a total dick, but Stiles really has to give him credit for saying that right to the face of an angry man with a gun. Also, he’s totally on the money, and Stiles is glad—and surprised—that for once Scott’s obsession with Allison is saving his life, not endangering it. It makes a change, honestly.

“Oh,” Peter says approvingly while Chris Argent bristles. “I like this one too.”

Jackson sits up straighter.

Peter smirks. “And instead of wasting time puzzling out exactly where your sister might have taken her hostages, I’ve always been a fan of jumping right to the chase. Give me your phone, Christopher.”

Chris Argent digs his phone out of his pocket, unlocks the screen, and tosses it to Peter.

Peter snatches it out of the air like the predator he is. He smirks as he scrolls through the contacts, and then dials.

“No,” he says after someone answers. “It’s not Chris. It’s Peter Hale.” He pauses for a moment. “Bleeding out on the ground in front of me, actually.”

Chris Argent presses his mouth into a thin line but doesn’t disagree.

“What’s it worth to you?” Peter asks, tilting his head slightly. “I see. Very well. Where?”

And then he ends the calls and tosses the phone back to Chris.

“Bad news,” he says. “She doesn’t give a shit if you’re dead. But she wants me and Derek to meet her at the cemetery.”

Chris Argent turns away as he pockets his phone.

Smart, Stiles thinks. The second Dad’s cruiser is found, every deputy in Beacon Hills will descend on the Preserve. The town itself will be a cop-free zone, and the cemetery is far enough away from any residential areas that nobody is likely to hear anything going down at this hour anyway.

It makes sense in another way too.

If Kate couldn’t engineer her showdown here, where she burned the Hales to death, then she’s going to engineer it where they’re buried.

It’s horrifying, but Peter doesn’t seem to notice. He has to be at least ninety percent sociopath, or a better liar than anyone Stiles has ever met. He’s not sure which option is more intimidating.

“Let’s go,” Peter says, rolling his shoulders. “I think I’ll drive that Porsche. Derek, you and Stiles can catch a lift with Christopher.”

“He has a plan, right?” Stiles whispers to Derek.

“Usually, yeah.”

Peter smirks as he walks toward them.

“You smell like magic,” Peter Hale says, and extends his hand to Lydia as she sits on the steps.

She regards him silently for a moment, and then allows him to help her to her feet.

Jackson hurries after them as they walk off into the darkness.

 

***

 

The moonlight makes such strange shadows on the ground.

Stiles’s feet crunch in the dry leaves as he walks toward Chris Argent’s SUV. “I’m sorry I didn’t come for you,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry I left you here with her.”

His hand twitches by his side, and Derek catches it.

“Stiles, I know. I had a little sister too. I would have done anything to protect her.”

Ahead of them, the tight line of Chris Argent’s shoulder stiffens even further.

Stiles squeezes Derek’s hand. “I’m still sorry though.”

He glances at Derek in the moonlight.

“You look nice,” Derek says at last, and Stiles remembers he’s wearing his shirt and tie from the dance still. Dress pants and polished shoes. Everything got a little crumpled in the crash, and there’s blood on his button-up shirt now, so Stiles figures Derek is lying. It’s a nice lie though.

“So do you,” he says, and then realizes how bad that sounds given Derek is wearing next to nothing. His face heats up. “Um. Can we forget I said that?”

“For now,” Derek agrees seriously, and then his mouth quirks up at the corners. “But we’ll revisit it later.”

Stiles barks out an ugly, surprised sound that’s almost a laugh. Who knew Derek could be funny? Gallows humor, probably, but Stiles will take it.

“We’ll get them back, Stiles,” Derek says. “Stella and your dad. I promise.”

Stiles attempts his own gallows humor. “Or die trying?”

Derek doesn’t smile. “Yes,” he says. “Or die trying.”

 


	17. Chapter 17

They take a back road out of the Preserve. Chris’s SUV handles it well, but Stiles can just imagine the thrashing that the undercarriage of Jackson’s Porsche is getting. He can’t bring himself to care though, because it’s Jackson.

He sits in the back seat with Derek, and swallows down two Advil from Chris’s first aid kit, and then hands the bottle back so that Chris can take some. Chris has been quietly bleeding this whole time too, and Derek doesn’t seem at all inclined to magic his pain away like he did with Stiles. Like he’s still doing, Stiles suspects, since their fingers are loosely linked together on the drive.

It takes a while, but they exit the Preserve a few miles down on Telegraph Road, and turn back towards Beacon Hills. On their way into town they pass a police cruiser, lights flashing and siren wailing, and Stiles knows that Dad’s car has been found, or is about to be.

He turns his face away and stares out the other window as the dark trees flash past.

The Beacon Hills Cemetery is on the edge of town. It overlooks the Preserve, but then so does most of the town. The Porsche turns off before they reach the cemetery, down a small road marked ‘Private’. Stiles has no idea where the road leads, and Peter pulls over before he can find out.

Chris pulls in behind him.

The night is colder, or Stiles’s previous burst of adrenaline has worn off enough that he can actually feel it, and the skin on his arms pebbles underneath the sleeves of his dress shirt.

Lydia, taking Peter’s hand as he helps her out of the Porsche, has her floaty silvery scarf thing wrapped around her shoulders.

A stole. Jesus. That’s what it’s called. A _stole_.

Stiles welcomes his brain back.

Jackson climbs out of the backseat.

“What’s the plan?” Chris Argent asks.

“You people distract her,” Peter says. “And I tear her throat out.”

Chris’s gaze is steady. “She came hunting an Alpha, Peter. She’ll be prepared. And she has hostages.”

Some of Stiles’s previous faith in Peter sours, and he shifts from foot to foot anxiously.

“Well then,” Peter says after a moment. “Let’s go and see where all the pieces are set up on this board, shall we?”

“Wait,” Chris says. “You kids, come over here.” He pops the back door on the SUV to reveal an arsenal. “Do you know how to use these?”

“Cop’s kid,” Stiles says, which doesn’t _technically_ answer the question, but still. He reaches for the Colt Delta Elite. It’s nothing fancy, but that’s good. Stiles won’t get distracted by unnecessary bells and whistles.

Lydia and Jackson are a little less enthusiastic about taking theirs.

“Safety’s on,” Chris says. “Don’t point them at anyone unless you mean to shoot. It’s regular ammo, not wolfsbane.”

“Good,” Stiles says. “I’m not planning on shooting any wolves.”

He glances over to Peter, to see his approving smile.

 

***

 

The Beacon Hills Cemetery is over twelve acres of pristine, peaceful memorial gardens. Stiles remembers that from the brochure. The words have been burned into his brain since his mom’s funeral. He hated them then, and he hates them now. But what the brochure didn’t mention was how at night the grounds are less pristine and peaceful, and more creepy as actual fuck.

They enter via a side gate, sheltered from sight—hopefully—by a copse of trees. The bright moonlight that drew patterns for Stiles back at the Hale house seems like a hindrance now.

“Wait here,” Derek whispers, squeezing Stiles’s hand, and then he and Peter both morph into that strange half-shift and vanish into the cemetery grounds.

“It’s not going to be as simple as he says, is it?” Lydia asks softly.

Chris Argent shakes his head. “I doubt it.”

 

***

 

Kate and her hunter partner—buddy? compatriot? minion?—have Dad and Stella held at the Hale memorial. Stiles isn’t surprised. Neither are Peter and Derek when they return with the news. The Hale memorial, from what Stiles remembers of it from passing it to visit Mom’s grave, is a big granite block with the names of the family carved on it. They don’t have individual graves. Stiles used to think that was because there weren’t enough body parts to make it worth it. But that’s stupid, because people have buried less. Now, he thinks, it’s so they can be together always, like a pack should be.

He wonders if Laura’s name has been added to the memorial yet.

“The element of surprise,” Peter says, “such as it is, is Chris, and you three. She won’t be expecting you. Now even though I would personally love to rip her throat out, I’m not actually that much of an egotist.”

Chris snorts.

“If you get the chance to shoot her,” Peter tells them, “do it. She won’t be sporting enough to offer you a warning, so don’t make the same mistake with her. Derek and I will go back and get the car, and drive in the main gates. The four of you should circle around and pick your positions. Does that pass muster with a hunter, Christopher?”

Chris dips his chin. “It’s the best plan we’ve got.”

“Good,” says Peter. The moonlight gleams on his teeth when he smiles. “See you at the finish line then.”

And then he’s gone.

Derek holds Stiles’s gaze for a moment, the weight of his promise steady between them, and then he follows swiftly after Peter.

 

***

 

“This is not how I expected tonight to go,” Lydia whispers as she hunkers with Stiles behind an ominous stone angel.

“Right?” Stiles agrees, and checks he’s still got his gun.

 

***

 

“Shit,” says Chris Argent, and stops crawling.

Stiles bumps into him.

The Hale memorial is as huge as he remembers. It’s almost as big as the old family crypts on the other side of the cemetery. The memorial is a black granite block, almost a wall, and it stands a little apart from the surrounding graves on a slight hill. In the moonlight, Stiles can make out two figures sitting at the base of the memorial—one in khaki, and one smaller one in a plaid shirt.

Dad and Stella!

There’s a blonde woman standing over them. Kate Argent.

And there’s a man dressed in black fatigues rounding the base of the memorial as Stiles watches.

And… and then another man.

And another one.

Kate doesn’t just have one minion with her. She has three.

Chris was right.

_Shit._

“There’s too many of them,” Chris says.

Stiles’s heart is thumping too fast. “Four of them, and six of us.”

“Three of us are _high-schoolers_ ,” Lydia hisses, which, point, but that’s Dad down there, and Stella. Stiles can’t just do _nothing_.

“We should call the police,” Jackson mutters.

Stiles balls his fists. “She is pointing a gun at my dad and my little sister!”

“Yeah, and if we fuck this up, she’ll _fire_ it,” Jackson says.

Again, point, and Stiles feels the first threads of cold panic grip his chest. He doesn’t know what to do. There’s too much at stake, and he doesn’t know what to do. Lydia’s right. He’s just a high-schooler holding a gun he probably can’t hit a fucking thing with anyway.

He doesn’t know what to _do_.

And then he hears the roar of an enraged Alpha reverberating through the moonlit night. The hair stands up on the back of Stiles’s neck, and it doesn’t matter any more.

Peter’s made the decision for them.

 

***

 

Stiles doesn’t really know what happens after that. He’s there, and he’s taking part, but it’s like he’s suddenly incapable of making short-term memories or something, because he can’t put the pieces together. It’s like moving from A to B with no idea of how he’s doing it. He’s focused on following Chris, and on getting to Dad and Stella, and everything else—even the guys with the guns—somehow becomes background noise.

Three guys and Kate Argent.

The first guy goes down fast, because he’s looking at the direction the Alpha’s roar came from, and Chris shoots him in the back. He hits the ground, and he’s not even moving, and Jackson—who must’ve been watching some cop shows recently—stops to kick his weapons out of reach.

It’s like, okay, wow, they have a system and everything, and this could actually _work_.

Except it only works for that one guy, because that’s all it takes for the others to know they’re coming.

Stiles hears a pop, and Chris grunts and flinches back like he’s been punched, and it takes Stiles longer than it should to realize that no, he’s been shot. But Chris is a badass, because he just transfers his firearm into his other hand and keeps moving.

“Get down!” he says over his shoulder, and Stiles tumbles obediently into position behind a headstone.

Lydia lands beside him.

Jackson crawls behind the cover of the headstone over from them.

Stiles peers out from behind the headstone. Chris is still moving, and Peter and Derek are there now. Derek is still in his odd half-shift, but Peter—Peter is _monstrous_. The Alpha is a massive, misshapen beast, made of claws and fangs and fur, and as Stiles watches he digs those claws in under a hunter’s jaw, and snaps the guy’s head back.

Stiles should be horrified, maybe, but that’s two down.

Chris stumbles at last, and rolls behind a headstone. He sits up against it, clutching his shoulder.

So that’s one of the good guys—Stiles will set time aside later to figure out exactly how he feels about Chris Argent—down too.

Stiles can see Dad and Stella. Dad’s leaning over Stella, shielding her, and Stiles can’t see why they’re not taking shelter on the other side of the memorial. Why aren’t they moving? They need to be moving.

Stiles shoves his gun into the waistband of his dress pants.

“Stiles!” Lydia hisses.

But Stiles is already scrambling out from behind the headstone and running for Dad and Stella.

He hears a roar, and registers vaguely that it’s Derek. He glances over toward him, and sees him grappling with a hunter. Derek’s got this, right? He’s got this. Because Stiles has to get to Dad and Stella.

So that’s two hunters down, and Derek’s occupying one, which leaves Peter to attack Kate, just like he wanted.

It’s working, right?

It’s working.

“Stiles!” Dad yells at him, and somehow Stiles hears it as the warning it is, and hits the ground like he’s diving for home on the baseball diamond. There’s a strange sound right above him, a small whoosh like the sudden displacement of air, and holy fuck, she _shot_ at him. She shot at him! Stiles really shouldn’t be so surprised, given what he knows about Kate Argent, but he’s sixteen years old, and this is the first time he’s ever been shot at.

It’s a learning curve, apparently.

He rolls to his feet somehow, still moving, and sprints up the slope of the hill towards the Hale memorial. He lands on his knees beside Dad and Stella, jarring every already-bruised bone in his body.

“Stiles,” Dad says, and raises his hands toward him.

His hands are cuffed. So, Stiles realizes, are his ankles. Stella isn’t cuffed, but she’s burrowed in to Dad like a tick, and Stiles figures she’ll be twice as difficult to dislodge. 

Stiles pants for breath. He’s here. He _made_ it.

Except Dad looks horrified to see him. “ _Stiles_.”

And Stiles doesn’t need to have seen as many cop movies as Jackson to know what the sudden press of cold metal against the back of his skull is.

 


	18. Chapter 18

Everything freezes in this moment.

When Stiles feels the press of the barrel against the back of his head, his limbs lock and his heart forgets to beat. A part of him wants to close his eyes, but also this might be the last time he gets to look at Dad’s face. It’s a careworn face, both somehow stern and open at the same time usually, but it’s stricken right now. Pale and stricken in the moonlight, as though he’s looking at Stiles and already seeing a ghost.

Stiles can hear Kate panting for breath behind him.

A droplet of sweat slides down the back of his skull, close to where she has the barrel of her firearm pressed.

Stella, peering out from behind Dad, is wide-eyed and open-mouthed, and Stiles wants to tell her to close her eyes, but words are beyond him right now. He can’t even breathe, so words are beyond him. 

Kate sucks in a breath. “Nobody mo—”

But Dad already is.

He’s already pulled the gun out of Stiles’s waistband, and he’s lifting it even as Stiles realizes what he’s doing and somehow finds a way to unlock his frozen limbs and drops heavily to the ground. The report is loud, and leaves Stiles’s head ringing. Leaves him lying there, gasping, and wondering if he’s still in one piece.

“Move!” Dad yells at him. “Move!”

And Stiles grabs Stella by the wrist and drags her around to the other side of the granite memorial. He looks back to see Dad following, crawling as best he can with his wrists and ankles cuffed.

Kate Argent is on the ground, but she’s still moving too. She’s climbing to her feet, swaying like a drunk, one hand out for balance, and one still clutching a gun.  

And Derek is running for her, roaring.

Kate pivots on her back foot, fires, and Derek hits the ground. Stiles can’t tell if it’s a dive or a fall.

And then Stiles can’t see anything at all, because Dad is here, and he’s shielding him and shoving him at the same time. Stiles hits the back of the granite memorial, one arm wrapped around Stella, and one hand clutching at Dad’s shirt.

He glimpses a flash of silver between the headstones. Lydia’s dress.

“Stella,” Stiles says. “There’s Lydia. Can you get to her? Can you run?”

“No!” Stella shakes her head, her face wet with tears. She clings to Stiles. “No!”

And then Stiles sees the darker shape moving towards them between the headstones. This is the second time tonight he’s been stunned to see Jackson Whittemore. Like, at some point he might even have to reevaluate his low opinion of the guy or something.

Jackson reaches the last of the headstones, and then breaks his cover, running towards the Hale memorial.

Stiles, with more strength than he even knows he has in him, pushes Stella towards him, and Jackson scoops her up and darts away with her. Kate rounds the back of the memorial, her gaze drawn to the movement, and Dad kicks both legs out at her, making her stumble backward a step before she regains her balance.

It’s enough.

Jackson and Stella are away.

Kate stares down at Stiles and Dad, and lifts her gun.

Stile’s heart stops beating.

“No.” The word is sharp and articulate, and so very strange to hear coming from the jaws of a beast.

 _Peter_.

He’s rounded the other end of the memorial.

“It’s me you want, not them,” he says. “The Hale Alpha.”

Kate shoots him, and he barely flinches as the bullet hits.

He shows her his fangs. “Is that all you’ve got, bitch?”

He steps back, and back again, and Kate follows him like a fish caught on a glimmering line. She steps past Stiles and Dad, and that’s Stiles’s signal to move.

“Go,” Dad mouths at him. “ _Go_.”

Stiles shakes his head.

He can’t. Not without Dad.

And then he looks up to see Derek.

They have her now, he thinks wildly. She has a gun, but they have her between them. The piggy in the middle.

Whatever happens, she won’t be walking away from both of them.

Derek crouches down, and grips the shackles on Dad’s ankles. Snaps the chain as easily as if it’s made of paper, and then does the same for his wrists. His eyes are glowing, and his fangs are showing, and there’s a low rumble in his chest that’s a growl waiting to burst forth, and he’s as beautiful like this—strong and powerful—as he is in his human skin.

Stiles takes Dad’s hand, and they scrabble down the hill towards the cover of the headstones.

And then, gasping for breath, Stiles turns to look back at the Hale memorial.

 

***

 

The Hale memorial is black granite, but it shines silver in the moonlight, a beacon on a hill. Peter and Derek stand at either end—one a beast, and one not quite a man, and Kate stands between them. Her back is to Derek, but there’s a readiness in her stance, a coiled anticipation, that says she knows he’s there. Her gaze might be fixed on Peter, but she’s not ignoring Derek.

She’s a hunter. She knows predators. She must know they’re circling her now, trying to divide her attention, to force a misstep. She must know they’re looking for a weakness. And Kate Argent doesn’t seem like the type of person who will give them one easily. 

 _“She came hunting an Alpha, Peter. She’ll be prepared,”_ Chris Argent said earlier tonight.

Stiles’s stomach swoops as Kate reaches into her jacket pocket with her free hand.

“Hey, Peter.” Her voice carries clearly on the cool night air. “Burn in hell. _Again_.”

She draws her arm back—

Derek moves toward her a fraction of a second too late.

—and throws.

The object hits Peter square in the chest, light flashes, and Peter howls and rears back as he is suddenly engulfed in flames.

From somewhere nearby, Stiles hears Stella scream.

 

***

 

Kate turns on her heel, laughing, her arm extended, and shoots Derek in the chest.

He stumbles back.

She fires again.

And then Peter is lunging towards her, grabbing her from behind and tackling her into the ground. They struggle, and the flames continue to burn, and Kate is screaming, or maybe both of them are, and Derek is there, trying to pull Peter off her, trying to save his uncle, and then, as quickly as it began, it’s over.

The screaming stops.

 

***

 

When Mom died, they used to come here a lot. Stiles remembers Stella, a little fat toddler, wavering on unsteady legs between the headstones. Dad would sit by Mom’s grave with Stella on his lap and Stiles at his side, and talk to Mom about things that were happening in their lives now that she was no longer with them. And Stiles tried to do the same, but it was weird, and it was wrong, and he couldn’t look around and see all the pretty trees and flowers and think that this was a nice place. Not when there were all those dead people underneath him, slowly rotting away.

Not when one of them was Mom.

He thinks of Mom now, and of the Hales, and of the thousands of others of dead here, and it doesn’t scare him anymore, but it aches.

Everything aches.

Derek’s howl isn’t quite like a wolf’s. It’s a man’s too, and it’s full of despair and disbelief and heartbreak.

Stiles climbs to his feet, drawn to that sound like it’s a siren song.

“Stiles,” Dad says, and tries to catch him.

Stiles dodges out of his reach and hurries up the slight hill towards the memorial. Dad follows. So does Lydia, a strange fae creature in her silver dress in the moonlight, her stole fluttering on the breeze. Jackson, still holding a crying Stella, stays back.

Good.

Good, because Stella shouldn’t see this.

Nobody should see this.

Chris Argent is on his feet again now, leaning against a headstone like he’s just crawled out of a grave. He makes no move to join them. Maybe he doesn’t want to see his sister’s body. Maybe he doesn’t want to see Peter’s. Or maybe he’s bleeding out slowly and doesn’t have the energy to move.

Stiles isn’t sure where he finds his, and he wasn’t even shot. But Derek needs someone—maybe he even needs Stiles specifically—and there’s no power in the universe that can stop him from going to him.

Breathless, he reaches the memorial.

Peter isn’t a beast anymore by the time Stiles gets there. He’s a man, his body red and black with burns. His chest is rising and falling, but the sound of his breathing is wet and ragged. There’s an intent light in his eyes, desperate and piercing, and Stiles can’t bring himself to look away.

Derek has dragged him away from Kate’s body, and is kneeling beside him at the base of the memorial.

There are no individual names on this side. Just one word: HALE.

Peter lifts a shaking arm, his fingers no longer… no longer properly _there_ , and touches the stone. When he drops his arm again, he’s left a bloody smear on the granite, as messy as a child’s finger painting.

“Peter!” Stella wails from a distance. “Peter!”

No.

No, it doesn’t end like this, Stiles thinks. It _can’t_. They beat the odds. They did, so it’s not fair that it ends like this. Peter isn’t the bad guy, and nobody deserves to burn like this twice. Peter can’t die. Not when he’s won. Not when he’s got his revenge. Not when—a strangled, crazy laugh tries to fight its way free of Stiles’s throat—not when he and Stella haven’t finished reading  _Matilda_ yet.

It’s not fair.

Stiles’s eyes sting as he drops to his knees beside Peter. His hands hover over his body, but he’s afraid to touch. He’s afraid it will hurt him, even though there’s probably nothing he can do at this point that would hurt Peter more.

Dad’s fingers dig into his shoulder.

“Peter,” Derek says, his voice as small as a child’s. “Uncle Peter.”

He’s not afraid to touch the way that Stiles is. He puts a hand on Peter’s chest—Stiles winces at the sticky sound it makes—and black lines, thick and inky, climb up the veins in his forearm.

Lydia kneels beside Stiles. Her face is pale, but her gaze is solemn and fierce at the same time. Her stole slips, baring her shoulders to the moonlight. She’s hurt, Stiles realizes. Her shoulder is bleeding.

She tugs her stole up again, shivering.

Peter’s blistered mouth quirks, but his breath stutters. It sounds as though he’s choking. He keeps his gaze fixed on Derek. “Do it,” he rasps. “Take it.”

Derek raises his hand and extends his claws.

Stiles closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to watch.

He still hears the moment Derek’s claws tear through what remains of Peter’s throat though, like wet Velcro ripping.  

“Derek?” he asks, eyes still squeezed shut. “Are you okay?”

And Derek says, in a shaking voice, “I’m the Alpha now.”


	19. Chapter 19

“Breathe, kiddo,” Dad says. “Just breathe.”

And Stiles gives Dad an unsteady nod and does his best to obey even while a weight presses down on his lungs, and he watches as Lydia leads Derek away through the headstones.

There’s a plan, Stiles guesses—either a clean-up or a cover-up, but he’s too tired and too shaky to listen to what Dad’s saying right now, let alone puzzle it out. He’s going into shock, probably, blood flooding into his core and leaving his extremities numb and trembling. Leaving his brain struggling to make connections and his synapses struggling to fire. Combined with his adrenaline dump, Stiles is twitching like a junkie desperate for his next fix.

He crouches down in front of a headstone—the letters too weathered to read—and drags his fingers against the shape of the cross carved into the marble.  

“Stiles?” Stella crouches down beside him, a tiny girl in an over-sized plaid shirt.

Stiles lets his relief carrying him to the ground. The grass is damp with dew, but Stiles doesn’t care about his wet ass. He opens his arms and Stella climbs into his lap. Her tear-stained face is hot against his neck. He curls his shaking fingers in her already-tangled hair.

 _Just breathe_.

He watches as a black SUV drives through the cemetery. Chris’s SUV. Jackson climbs out of the driver’s seat. As far as Stiles can tell, Lydia and Derek aren’t with him.

Jackson hauls a tarp out the back of the SUV, and Stiles turns his face away. When he looks up again, Jackson and Chris are loading Peter’s wrapped corpse into the back of Jackson’s Porsche. 

“Breathe,” Stiles whispers to himself.

Jackson drives the Porsche out, leaving Chris and Dad standing by the Hale memorial.

Stiles hears the wail of sirens in the distance on the cold night air.

He closes his eyes and tries to remember to breathe.

When he opens them again, the cemetery is full of red and blue flashing lights, and Dad is leaning over him.

“No such thing as werewolves,” Dad tells them both.

“Got it,” Stiles mumbles, blinking away the black spots in front of his vision.

_Just breathe._

 

  
***

 

It’s hours before Stiles gets home. It’s almost dawn, and the darkness is starting to soften into gray. Stiles and Stella have been to the hospital, been to the station, and finally they’re home again. Stiles was half-afraid he and Stella would be interrogated at the station, but they hadn’t been. It’d take a brave deputy to get between Sheriff Stilinski and his clearly-traumatized kids.

When he gets home, Stiles wants nothing more than to turn around and head out again, to try to find Derek, to see if he’s okay—but how can he be okay? He’s the only Hale left now—but he doesn’t know where Derek is, and Derek doesn’t have a phone.

“Lucky it’s Saturday,” Dad says, “because no way would either of you be going to school today.”

He pulls the comforter down on his bed and nods toward it.

Stella clambers into bed and buries her face in Dad’s pillow.  

Stiles wants to do the same. So what if it’d make him feel like a little kid, needing the comfort of Dad’s bed after a scary dream? Because it turns out Stiles isn’t as grown-up as he thinks, and that nightmares can absolutely be real.

Dad sits down on the edge of the bed and rubs Stella’s back gently. Then he lifts his free arm in invitation, and Stiles sits down beside him and leans against him. He’s too wired to lie down and sleep, but it’s nice to sit here with Dad while Stella, exhausted, dozes off.

“So, werewolves,” Dad says quietly. “Shit.”

“Swear jar,” Stella says into Dad’s pillow, her voice hoarse from all the crying she’s done tonight.

Dad’s wry smile is faint in the gloom. “You remind me in the morning, kiddo, and I’ll put a quarter in.”

“Dad, if it’s not werewolves, than what?” Stiles asks, his heartbeat ratcheting higher. “You said, no such thing as werewolves, and okay, that’s good, but if there are no werewolves then what’s the story? There has to be a story, right? And we’re gonna need to know it too, me and Stella. Is someone from the station going to want to question us, because—”

“Slow it down, Stiles,” Dad says, hugging Stiles closer for a moment. “You have to remember to breathe, kiddo.”

Stiles swallows and nods.

Dad rubs his back. “The story is that Kate Argent and her crew were sovereign citizens, of the domestic terrorist rather than plain weirdo variety. You know what sovereign citizens are?”

“Uh, yeah. I have ADHD and Wikipedia. I know what _everything_ is, Dad.”

“Smartass,” Dad says fondly.

“Swear jar,” Stella mumbles indistinctly.  

Dad snorts. “Anyway, they were out in the Preserve for who knows what reason, they saw a police cruiser, and that’s all the justification they needed. And Chris Argent, who is going to testify to his sister’s radicalization by the way, had followed her out there to check up on her, and caught up with us at the cemetery in time to lend a hand.”

Stiles frowns into the softening gloom. “And… and they way they died though? Is that going to hold up under an autopsy? Not the burns, I guess, because grenades or whatever, but _claw marks_?”

“A dog,” Dad says. “They had an attack dog. A wolf dog, probably. It turned on them and ran away.”

Stiles’s dubiousness must show in his expression. It’s not like he has a poker face.

Dad raises his eyebrows. “But you don’t need to worry about that, son. You and Stella were in the back of Kate’s SUV the whole time, okay? You never saw anything at the cemetery until Chris and I got you out again. Okay?”  

“Okay,” Stiles says.

No werewolves, no Lydia and Jackson, no confrontation at the Hale house after all. It’s like the supernatural has been entirely excised from the night’s events. Stiles still isn’t sure how it will hold up to scrutiny. It all depends on Dad, he supposes, and on how much his reputation is worth. People don’t go looking to dig holes in the stories of honest men, do they?

“I’m sorry,” he says, his throat aching. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I was going to, and then…”

And then Kate’s SUV rammed them right off the road.

“Kiddo,” Dad says, and he sounds rueful, “I wouldn’t have believed you anyway. When she took me and Stella, Stella spilled the whole story. And even then I didn’t believe it. And when Kate was ranting about werewolves, I thought she was delusional, that somehow you kids had found out what she believed, and Stella thought it was real. It took until I _saw_ it, and even then I think I was mostly still in denial. It’s gonna take a while to process everything.”

“Yeah,” Stiles agrees softly. “It does.”

“You want to sleep in here tonight?” Dad asks. “I think I’d feel better if both of you are where I can see you.”

Stiles makes a small sound of agreement, even though he doubts he’ll be able to sleep. Not after tonight.

Not when all he can think about is Derek’s lonely howl, and the way it echoed in the places inside Stiles that have also been carved out by loss.

 

 

***

 

Stiles somehow slips into an uneasy sleep, and dreams of lights and runes and shifting waves of magic rolling back and forth through the Preserve. He dreams of Derek’s howl, and Peter’s scream, and of a fire that won’t ever stop burning.

He jolts awake, staring up at the patterns of light on his Dad’s ceiling from the streetlight on the corner. Dad is snoring softly and Stella, wedged up against him like a barnacle, doesn’t look like an earthquake would wake her. Stiles doesn’t realize what pulled him from sleep until he hears it again: that creaky floorboard that’s exactly three paces from his desk. Stiles has been avoiding it for years.

He slides out of bed and pads down the hallway to his room.

There’s a werewolf wearing a glower and a leather jacket waiting for him, framed by the early morning light. It feels like a lifetime since Derek last climbed into his window, and Stella caught him.

“Hey,” he whispers.

“Hey.” Derek’s eyes flash red, and he averts his gaze. He hunches over a little, as though he’s trying to disappear into the space between his shoulders. “Sorry. I didn’t know where else to come.”

He’s apologizing for his vulnerability, Stiles thinks. Apologizing for not wanting to be alone right now, when he’s just lost the last member of his pack. And Stiles can’t know exactly what pack means, probably, but he knows what family means.

“It’s okay,” Stiles says. He steps into the room and opens his arms awkwardly. “I’m glad you came. So, yeah, I’m just gonna…”

At first Derek just lets himself be hugged, and it’s as awkward and uncomfortable as Derek always is, but then his hands come to rest on Stiles’s back, and he’s not just being hugged, he’s hugging back. Stiles feels the tension bleed out of him, and exhales slowly.

“I’m sorry about Peter,” he says.

Derek’s breath is warm on the side of his neck. “I thought he was gone. For years. And for a second it felt like I had him back, and now…”

Stiles doesn’t say anything. There isn’t really anything to say.

Derek’s throat clicks as he swallows.

“We buried him at the house,” Derek continues. “Lydia and Jackson helped.” His tone softens into something almost teasing. “She’s a force of nature, isn’t she? I can see why you have a crush on her.”

“Lydia’s awesome,” Stiles agrees. “But I don’t have a crush on her anymore.”

And that’s Derek’s opening, if he wants it, but Stiles isn’t surprised he doesn’t take it. It’s been a hell of a night, after all, and this thing they have—this weird, new, unspoken thing—isn’t going anywhere. It’s okay. It’ll still be there, Stiles thinks, when the dust settles.

And he thinks that Derek gets that, because he runs a hand up Stiles’s spine, and curls his fingers around the nape of his neck, and just holds him. 

This isn’t a bro hug.

It probably never was, honestly.

Stiles closes his eyes and breathes.

 

***

 

He has no idea how long they stand like that. It feels like it could be an eternity. He only looks up again, face burning, when he hears Dad pointedly clearing his throat. He and Derek extricate themselves awkwardly.

“Breakfast in fifteen, boys,” Dad says. He steps out of the doorway, and Stiles hears an _oof_ as he runs into something—or someone.

A second later Stella is rushing into Stiles’s room. “Derek! _Derek!_ ”

She hits him like a ton of bricks, but Derek doesn’t even flinch. Of course he doesn’t. Stella might be an unstoppable force, but Derek’s an unmovable object.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” he tells her, his voice soft, his arms coming around her.

“I’m glad _you_ are!” she exclaims fiercely, and then buries her face in his chest and sobs.

They’re not exactly okay, Stiles knows, but words are paltry. They fall short at times like these. So they’re not okay, but they’re standing, and it’s a start.

It’s a start.

He breathes.


	20. Chapter 20

Dad’s fallback position in times of stress are his own childhood favorites, so Stiles isn’t surprised to walk into the kitchen and see the kasza manna simmering in a pot on the stovetop. The honey is already sitting on the kitchen table, and Stella is rummaging in the refrigerator for the blackberry syrup.

“Stiles,” Dad says, “get over here and make the coffees.”

Stella pops out of the refrigerator. “Can I—”

“Hot chocolate for you,” Dad says.

From the time she was toddling, Stella’s been trying to catch up with Stiles and Dad. She doesn’t grumble this morning though. She just takes the syrup and sets it on the table next to the honey, and then takes Derek by the hand and sits down beside him.

The kasza manna is good. It’s warm and filling and sweet, and reminds Stiles without fail of lazy weekend mornings with Mom and Dad, and then lazy weekend mornings with Dad and Stella. He’s inherited Dad’s memories as well, in a way, because sometimes Dad talks about how his mom made kasza manna for him, and when he tells the story he does the accent as well. Stiles never met his babcia. She died before he was born, but he sometimes thinks that a small part of her lives on in tiny family rituals like these.

Derek looks a little closed off at first, like he’s expecting Dad to bombard him with questions all at once, but he doesn’t know Dad, and—more importantly—he doesn’t know what kasza manna for breakfast means in this kitchen. But he relaxes bit by bit as he eats and it becomes obvious that Dad’s not going to start in on an interrogation immediately.

Stiles steals glances at Derek as he eats, and feels his face heat up whenever he finds Derek looking back at him.

And shit, he needs to stop doing that before Dad notices.

He glances at Dad.

Too late.

He tries not to choke on his kasza manna.

It isn’t until Stella takes the empty dishes to the sink that Dad opens his mouth.  

“Derek,” he says, and his tone is half Dad, half Sheriff, “I think we need to talk, don’t you?”

And Stiles sits there, his stomach twisting, as Derek tells Dad everything.

He tells Dad about werewolves, and about how he was born one, and so was most of his family. He tells Dad about hunters, and about how there’s supposed to be a code. He tells Dad that Kate Argent broke that code when she burned their house down with the Hales inside.

Dad’s expression tightens, and his eyes shine, and Stiles knows that he’s remembering the fire too. He was there that night, just another deputy, and Stiles remembers how cried the next morning for all those people who were killed. And how he’d hugged Stiles a little too tightly, like he was afraid to let him go.

Derek talks about how he and Laura went to New York, but came back because of rumors of a rogue Alpha on their territory. They didn’t know, they couldn’t have guessed, that it was Peter.

“And Peter was doing it, but he wasn’t?” Dad asks, mouth pulling down a little.

Derek looks to Stiles.

“The nurse was making him,” Stiles says. “Like, magic control.”

“Magic’s a thing too?” Dad asks.

“Why not, right?” Stiles says with a shrug.

“Point taken.” Dad sighs. “But he didn’t kill your sister?”

“No,” Derek says. “The nurse, she…”

“And that, um, brings us up to last night,” Stiles says, when it’s apparent Derek can’t finish that sentence. “Kate came back to town, looking for the Alpha who was killing people—those were Peter’s kills, by the way, the bus driver and the guys in the woods, but they were the ones who set the fire or covered it up, so no great loss there, right?”

Dad levels him with a stare.

Right. Officer of the law and stuff.

“And Kate must have been watching the hospital,” Stiles says, “and figured out that Stella had been reading to Peter. I guess when she couldn’t get him at the house, after she rammed your cruiser she saw the opportunity and took it. Took _Stella_.”

Stella shudders, and slurps her hot chocolate.

“Jesus, kid,” Dad says. “When I had to leave you in the crusier…”

Another unfinished sentence, because words are insufficient things.

“I get it,” he says. “You had to make a choice. I would have made the same one, Dad. I would have gone with Stella too.”

“Come here, kid,” Dad says, pushing his chair back from the table to make room.

Stiles leans into him for an awkward hug.   

Dad slaps him on the back a few times before letting him go again. “One thing I don’t get,” he says at last, “is how you even got tangled up in this whole thing?”

Stiles exchanges a glance with Derek.

“Oh, I know!” Stella says, setting her mug down with a clatter. “It’s because Scott’s a werewolf too!”

Stiles will give her one thing. She knows how to drop a bomb.

 

***

 

Derek goes home after breakfast.

Home to a burned out husk of a house in the woods.

Home to the place where his entire family did.

Home to Peter’s grave.

Stiles spends the day in what can only be described as a fugue state. He worries about Derek sitting alone in that ruined old house. Derek, who still doesn’t have a phone so that Stiles can bombard him with texts and check on how he’s doing.  

He and Stella spend the rest of the day stuffing themselves on sushi and marathoning _Kitchen Nightmares_.

Dad is in and out all day. He’s not officially working today, but if he wants to steer the investigation in the right direction, he’s got to be there. Stiles has a feeling he’s going to be spending a lot more time at the station until this whole thing is buried.

“Screen your calls and don’t answer the door,” he says when he comes home to grab lunch. “Reporters.”

“From the _Beacon Hills Weekly Shopper_?” Stiles asks with a snort.

“From a little further afield than that, actually,” Dad says. “But it’ll die down in a few days. Also, stay off social media, okay?”

“Okay,” Stiles says. He has no intention of staying off social media, but he can lurk for a while instead of posting.

In the afternoon he hears the rattling sputter of Scott’s dirt bike coming down the street. It gets impossibly loud—it needs a new muffler or something—before it cuts out suddenly, and then there’s a banging on the door.

“Dude!” Scott exclaims. “Is that a TV news van parked over the road?”

“Possibly,” Stiles says. “Get inside before they come over here.”

Scott closes the door and then turns the deadbolt. “What the hell happened last night? Allison said her aunt _died_ , and it’s all over the news that your dad got kidnapped? And you and Stella were with him?”

“Allison’s aunt and her hunter goons tried to kill us,” Stiles says. “She killed Peter Hale. He was the Alpha.”

“ _What_?” Scott’s jaw drops. “Are you _serious_?”

“Pretty sure I couldn’t make it up if I tried,” Stiles says. “By the way, Dad knows about werewolves now. He knows you’re one. And also, Derek is the Alpha now.”

“Dude.” Scott blinks at him dumbly for a moment, and then holds up his backpack. “It’s lucky I brought Doritos.”

 

***

 

Some things are a single-bag-of-Doritos problem, and some things take three bags. Luckily Scott brought three bags. They sit on the couch, Stella wedged between them, watching Kitchen Nightmares and eating Doritos.

“I missed everything,” Scott says, more than once, and Stiles sort of wants to punch him in the face a little bit.

Like, he and Scott have been best bros forever, and last night Scott wasn’t there. Okay, so Stiles had told Allison to make sure they both stayed out of the Preserve, but it rankles a little because he also told Jackson that, right? And Jackson, of all people, still turned up. He was surprisingly heroic as well, which cancels out his initial dougebaggery at ignoring Stiles’s request to stay away, probably.

So it’s irrational to be annoyed with Scott, but since when has Stiles been the most rational guy? Still, he tries to swallow his faint resentment down along with his Cool Ranch Doritos, and not think about how Scott probably didn’t even spare him a thought last night because, like Jackson says, he was getting busy with Allison at the Value Inn, because nothing says romance like ugly carpet, mysterious stains, and a mini fridge that doesn’t keep anything cold.

It’s irrational, and Stiles knows it, but knowing it isn’t enough to dissolve the little knot of irritation in his gut when has to explain everything that happened last night—and in the days preceding it—because Scott wasn’t there for him.

“Dude,” Scott says, shaking his head. “This whole thing is _crazy_.”

And Stiles thinks, _No, not crazy. Terrifying. Fucking_ terrifying _. I thought Dad and Stella were going to die, and where were_ you _?_

But he forces a quick grin instead. “Right?”

He guesses that he and Scott are still standing too, even if they’re not shoulder-to-shoulder like they usually are. People grow apart, right? Maybe that’s what’s happening here, or maybe this is just a glitch, a bump in the road, and they’ll fall back to where they used to be in a little while. Maybe Stiles is over-thinking it—it’s sort of his thing—and he shouldn’t be performing the mental autopsy of their friendship when he’s still in shock from last night.

“Hey,” he says, “can you do me a favor?”

Scott smiles. “Sure.”

“Dad doesn’t want me or Stella to leave the house.” Stiles crunches on another Dorito. “Can you go out to the Hale place and tell Derek he’s invited for dinner?”

Scott looks puzzled. “Yeah, I can do that.”

“Thanks,” Stiles says.

 

***

 

“Hi, Derek!” Stella exclaims when Derek turns up on the doorstep at seven, looking slightly bewildered. “Come in! Dad’s at work still so we’re having grilled cheese. Do you like grilled cheese?”

Derek’s mouth twitches. “I do.”

Stiles closes and locks the door after Derek.

“Thanks for this,” Derek says, and sounds embarrassed.

“We owed you for the sushi, right?” Stiles flashes him a quick smile.

Derek’s brow creases. “No, I got the sushi because I made Stella drop hers.”

“Well, I think we’re past keeping track.”

Derek mouth quirks. “I guess so.”

“Also, we made up the spare room,” Stiles tells him, holding up a hand to forestall any objections. “No. You’re staying until you find a place that has actual walls and a ceiling. And preferably some furniture. You saved our lives, Derek. And it’s not even about that, not really.”

Derek looks at him warily.

“You have to stay here,” Stella says, her glare daring Derek to refuse. “You’re our _friend_.”

“You’re our friend,” Stiles agrees, reaching out to brush his fingers down Derek’s arm in a gesture that says more, probably, than simple friendship. “Stay?”

Derek’s expression softens, and he nods. “Okay. I’ll stay.”

Stiles tries to keep his smile on the sane side of triumphant.

Stella isn’t so restrained. She hoots, and stomps her feet, and does a victory dance toward the kitchen.


	21. Chapter 21

It’s probably a sign of the apocalypse that Stiles is out of bed early on Sunday morning. He staggers downstairs to find Dad reading the newspaper at the kitchen table, a mug of coffee steaming in front of him.

“Couldn’t help but notice there’s a werewolf sleeping in the spare room,” Dad says mildly.

“Yep.” Stiles shuffles to the refrigerator, liberates the orange juice, unscrews the lid, and lifts the juice towards his mouth.

“Glass,” Dad says in a warning tone.

Stiles grunts and obeys, but he feels a little more human when he pours his juice like a civilized person and takes a sip.

“So,” Dad says, setting the paper down. “Derek.”

“He was living at his old house, Dad.” Stiles slumps into a chair beside his dad. “What was I supposed to do?”

“Son, I wasn’t complaining you asked him to stay,” Dad says slowly. “I was steering you towards elaborating on the nature of your relationship.”

Stiles almost spits out his juice. “Holy shit, you sound like you’ve fallen straight out of an courtroom drama!”

“Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I have a kind of vested interest in the law,” Dad says. “And don’t try to dodge the subject, Stiles, because I also have a vested interest in my sixteen-year-old son’s welfare.”

Yeah, that’s fair.

For a moment Stiles wonders if there’s anything he can say to Dad that’ll change who they were on Friday night at the cemetery, where they both would have died for the other one. And Stiles doesn’t think there is, but at the same time he doesn’t want to test it. He’s never had this discussion with Dad. Then again, maybe he hasn’t had to, because Dad picked up on it anyway, didn’t he?

Stiles’s fault, probably. He’s never been subtle.

Also, that was _not_ a bro-hug Dad caught him sharing with Derek the other night.

Stiles sighs and pushes his juice away. He drags his fingers through his bed hair. “It’s not nothing,” he says at last, “but also, it’s not anything yet, you know?”

Dad raises his eyebrows.

“Like, I’m pretty sure there are feelings there,” Stiles says, his heart hammering, “on both sides, even, but nothing’s happened. And that’s okay, because he just lost the last of his family, you know? I’m just gonna be his friend for a while, because I think that’s what he needs most of all right now.”

Dad’s mouth twitches.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, nerves twisting in his stomach. “So that’s how it is with us, I guess.”

“You’re a good kid, Stiles. And, despite a lot of evidence to the contrary, you’ve got a good head on your shoulders too.” Dad’s eyes shine. “I’m proud of you.”

Stiles’s feels a flush rising at the unexpected praise. “Thanks, Dad.”

Dad reaches out and puts his hand over Stiles’s. Squeezes it. “Your mom would be proud of you too, kiddo. You and Stella.”

Stiles swallows, his throat aching.

“Mind you, after the other night, you’re both grounded until you’re thirty.”

Stiles shrugs, and reaches over to filch a piece of Dad’s toast. “It’ll save on college expenses, I guess.”

Dad laughs at that, and lets him steal the toast.

 

***

Stella prods and pokes at Derek all day. Stiles would tell her to stop, but Derek doesn’t seem to mind. His expression is softer around Stella, his body language less guarded. He sits with her in the living room and helps her make a play house for her soon-to-arrive kitten. It involves threading curled pieces of newspaper and strips of fabric through holes in the bottom of the box, and fastening them, so that when the box is turned upside down it’ll be a tentacled cave. Stiles personally thinks that any kitten worth its salt will systematically destroy it in minutes, but that’s a problem for the future, isn’t it? At the moment it’s keeping both Stella and Derek distracted and entertained.

Stiles curls up on the couch with a stack of his old Batman comics and listens to Stella drag more words out of Derek than he’s ever heard before.

“Was Peter a good uncle?” she asks, stabbing the end of the scissors through the box.

“Mmm.” Derek tears a strip of newspaper. “He was the fun one. The one who’d always go behind our parents’ backs. Like once, he was supposed to take us to an exhibit at the museum that Mom wanted us to see, but she and Dad were working. She called him when we should have been home that afternoon, and he said, ‘Where are we? About halfway to Disneyland. See you in four days!’”

Stella’s gasp is part delighted, part scandalized.

And this, Stiles thinks, _this_ is what Derek should have told Scott about pack. Not about alphas and betas and omegas, and rules and hierarchy and codes. This right here. This part where pack is _family_. Because Scott still doesn’t really understand that werewolves aren’t monsters. He doesn’t understand they’re people, the same as anyone.

Stella’s eyes are round. “Was your mom mad?”

Derek huffs out a laugh. “I think she pretended to be more mad than she really was.”

Stella gasps, and Stiles looks away from Batman in time to see Derek shred another strip of newspaper—this time with his claws.

Derek glances at Stiles, his cheeks pinking when he sees Stiles’s grin.

And this too, Stiles thinks. Scott should see moments like this, where unsheathed claws don’t mean threats and bloodshed. There’s so much more to werewolves—to _Derek_ —than Scott has let himself see.

It’s sad, but it’s not unfixable. Scott’s not a bad guy, though he can be as intractable as Stiles in his own way. He just needs a little time, and maybe a little nudge. Stiles can help with that, and will.

“Must have been amazing,” he says, “growing up in the Preserve. I’ll bet you ran around barefoot, right? Like a bunch of little hellions.”

“Throwing stones from right inside that glass house of yours, huh?” Derek asks, and Stiles laughs, delighted. Derek’s smile grows. “We did, actually. We were barefoot in winter even, since we run hotter than humans.”

 _In_ all  _the ways_ , Stiles thinks, but luckily doesn’t voice that with Stella in the room.

“Laura used to talk about rebuilding the house,” Derek says, his voice softening. “I don’t know though.” He ducks his head. “It wouldn’t be the same.”

“It wouldn’t,” Stiles agrees. “But that’s okay, I think.”

Derek nods slightly. “Maybe. It’s hard…” He pauses, swallows. “We were on the run for so long, me and Laura, that it always seemed like a pipe dream. I didn’t think it was something I’d ever have to really consider, as long as Kate was out there. And now…”

“It’s been a day, Der,” Stiles says softly. “You don’t need to decide anything right away.”

Derek nods again, his gaze dropping as he feeds a strip of newspaper through his hands.

Stella shuffles over so that she’s close enough to lean on him. “When you’re a wolf, do you eat squirrels?”

Derek knocks her gently with his shoulder. “Sometimes.”

“Gross!” But she sounds thrilled. “Do you pee on trees? Do you sniff other wolves’ butts?”

“Derek pleads the fifth!” Stiles exclaims, rolling up his Batman comic and reaching out to bat her in the head with it. He takes in Derek’s relieved look. “Although, it’s valid question, and if you ever feel like answering it—”

Derek snatches the comic off him, and hits him over the head with it, while Stella screams with laughter.

That’s how Dad finds them of course: Stiles half off the couch with Stella straddling him and tickling him, and Derek smacking him with a Batman comic. They all freeze like deer in the headlights when Dad clears his throat.

“Well,” Dad says at last, “I guess the three of you just volunteered to fold the laundry. Since you’re clearly doing nothing more important.”

And then he vanishes again, before they can refuse.

“Unfair!” Stella yells after him.

“Ugh.” Stiles finally lets gravity win and rolls all the way off the couch onto the floor. He squints up at Derek. “You don’t have to. You’re a guest and—”

Derek cuts him off. “I don’t mind.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, his gaze drawn to Derek’s. “Cool.”

Derek swallows, and looks away.

It’s such a little thing but it’s been a long time, Stiles supposes with a sudden ache in his chest, since Derek had a parent tell him to fold laundry.

 

***

 

Jesus. School tomorrow, and it’s going to be a mess. Stiles is not used to being the center of attention, but what with being kidnapped on Friday night—and it being all over the news—he knows that he’s not exactly going to be able to fly under the radar tomorrow. Also, he hasn’t done his homework. It’s already 7.30 p.m. by the time he realizes this, which sends him into a soda-fuelled two hours of frantic sub-standard work. But it’ll do, right? As long as he hands something in, most of his teachers might cut him some slack because of his extenuating circumstances. Not Harris, of course, because he’s a dick.

Stiles is ready to crash just before ten, so he heads to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Coming back, he notices the light is still on in Stella’s room, and he can hear her reading aloud.

He leans in her doorway.

Stella is sitting up in her bed, leaning against the headboard, a book in her lap. “ _I cannot for the life of me understand why small children take so long to grow up_ ,” she says, following the words with a finger. “ _I think they do it deliberately, just to annoy me_.”

Derek is sitting beside her. He’s watching Stella’s face as she reads, his expression filled an ineffable longing that can only come from having had a little sister once, and having lost her.

And not just her, of course. There were other names on that black granite memorial in the cemetery. Too many of them.

“Stella,” he says, and she looks over at him. “It’s late.”

“Just until we finish this chapter,” she says, and it’s not a question.

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Okay, but if Dad busts you, you’re on your own.”

She grins, because that’s a risk she’s willing to take.

“Goodnight, Derek,” Stiles says.

Derek smiles at him softly. “Goodnight, Stiles.”

Stiles is on his way back to his bedroom when he hears the familiar sounds of Little Mix’s _DNA_ blaring out. Dad really needs to sort out the security settings on his cellphone if he doesn’t want Stiles and Stella to keep stealing it and changing his ringtone. It’s just common sense.

“Chris,” Dad says. There’s silence for a moment and then: “What do you mean a problem?”

Stiles stands at the top of the steps and listens.

“No,” Dad says at last. “If he’s here for the funeral, that’s one thing. But if he comes near my kids, or near Derek Hale, then we’re going to have an issue. You feel free to let him know that in whatever language it takes.”

Another pause, and a snort from Dad.

“Well, keep me in the loop. And it sounds like you’d better watch your own back. Yeah. Goodnight.”

Stiles presses a hand to his chest.

And then, from downstairs, Dad calls, “Stiles? I know you’re there.”

Who needs wolves with super hearing in the house when Dad’s here with his own mystical powers? Or, well, sixteen years of experience in knowing Stiles is an inveterate eavesdropper.

“Bedtime,” Dad says. “Now.”

Stiles scuttles off to bed.


	22. Chapter 22

Stiles might not have much experience at being the center of attention at school, but Jackson and Lydia certainly do. They’re waiting in the parking lot, leaning against Jackson’s silver Porsche—if it was scratched on Friday night by Peter’s journey through the back roads of the Preserve, the damage has already been buffed and polished out—looking ridiculously attractive. Both of them.

“Hurry up, Stilinski,” Jackson says when Stiles pulls in nearby.

Jesus. What a dick. Except Stiles gets the feeling that it’s all pretty much an act now—it’s a fucking good act, he’ll give Jackson that. He’s totally committed to the role, for sure—so he slings his backpack over his shoulder and picks up his pace as he reaches them.

They both look like they’ve stepped off the front page of a glossy fashion magazine, whereas Stiles is pretty sure he has peanut butter on his shirt.

But they make room in between them like he belongs there, and stride toward the school like they expect there are cameras watching.

Are there classes or something? On how to be this attractive and intimidating? Weekly sessions in a secret undisclosed location, with a teaching staff made up of supermodels and disaffected beautiful people? Because Beacon Hills seems to have a lot of that going around, but Stiles never got sent the prospectus.

The crowds part for Jackson and Lydia like they’re celebrities. It’s weird. Everyone is looking and whispering, probably wondering if Stiles’s kidnapping makes him suddenly cool enough to be elevated into Lydia and Jackson’s social sphere, but nobody dares approach. It’s like Lydia and Jackson project a force field that the regular kids can’t penetrate. And Stiles would know. He was on the other side of it as recently as Friday.

They escort Stiles to his locker, and then to the door of his homeroom.

“You’re eating lunch with us today,” Jackson tells him with a haughty expression.

Stiles sees right past it.

“Okay,” he says. “And Jackson?”

Jackson cocks an eyebrow at him.

Lydia takes her compact out of her purse and inspects her perfectly applied lipstick.

“What you guys did the other night, both of you, was just…” He swallows. “But you got Stella away from her, Jackson, and like, I owe you. I owe you _everything_.”

Jackson flashes him a cocky smirk. “Whatever.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. 

Jackson lowers his voice. “Is she okay?”

Because heaven forbid anyone overhear him and realize he has a heart.

Lydia snaps her compact closed and slips it back inside her purse.

“Fuck you,” Stiles says warmly. “You pretend to be this total douche, I see through you now, you asshole.” He looks at Lydia. “I used to wonder what you saw in him, but I get it now. I get it.”

“Are you saying he’s your type?” she asks.

Jackson snorts. “I’m everyone’s type.”

He’s such an asshole.

Stiles loves him.

 

***

 

In Chemistry, Harris is still a total dick to Stiles, so some things never change.

In English, Allison looks totally shell-shocked and when she tries to look for a pen in her bag, she spills the contents all over the floor and Scott scrambles to help her pick them up.

Stiles wonders if she knows.

 

***

 

“She doesn’t know,” Lydia says at lunch, stabbing her salad delicately with a fork. “I talked to her yesterday. She’s buying the whole story about her aunt being a domestic terrorist.” She slips a piece of lettuce into her mouth and chews for a moment. “Scott should really tell her.”

Stiles laughs weakly. “Scott? Why would—”

“Don’t play dumb, Stilinski.” Jackson rolls his eyes. “Derek told us everything when we were burying his uncle.”

Right. Grave digging duty. It probably brings people together and stuff. Nothing like a bond formed over a shallow grave.

“Also, nobody gets that suddenly good at lacrosse,” Jackson mutters, like he’s still personally affronted by that most of all. “Not when they were so freaking lame to start with.”

They’re sitting alone at the popular table. Scott keeps casting Stiles worried looks from where he’s sitting with Allison, but as far as Stiles is concerned he has werewolf shit to discuss with Jackson and Lydia, and if Allison’s not in the loop then it’s not their place to bring her in. That’s on Scott. Also, her crazy hunter aunt tried to kill him and his family on Friday night, and he’s still processing that. He really doesn’t have the capacity to deal with her inevitable shock at any werewolf reveal in addition to that.

“Anyway, she doesn’t know,” Lydia says. “And Mr. Argent says that his father is coming to town for Kate’s funeral, and he’s apparently just as crazy as Kate was, which is the reason Allison’s parents don’t want her to know anything about hunters, and werewolves, or anything that could drastically lower her life expectancy.”

Wow. Apparently while Stiles was reading Batman and watching TV over the weekend, Lydia was on a fact-finding mission at the Argents’ house. Also, that explains Dad’s phone call from Chris Argent last night.

Lydia catches his look and shrugs. “You’re not the only one who likes to get the complete picture.”

Jackson helps himself to one of Stiles’s tator tots. “How’s Derek?”

“I don’t know,” Stiles says. “I mean, he just lost his last family member. How do you think?”

Jackson and Lydia exchange a look.

“What?” Stiles asks. “What?”

“It’s nothing,” Lydia says airily. “So is Derek staying with you?”

“Yeah.” Stiles feels like he’s been sidelined somehow.

“Good.” Lydia clasps her hands together. “We’ll come and visit him after school.”

“Wait, what?” A part of Stiles’s brain snags on the idea of Lydia Martin  _in his house_ , and he shakes his head to untangle himself. “Why?”

“Because Gerard Argent, Allison’s grandfather, is very likely going to have Derek in his sights when he comes to town,” Lydia says, explaining it like he’s slow. “And an Alpha needs betas to be strong. At least two, preferably more.”

Stiles squints at her. “How do you know all this in two days?”

Jackson snorts. “Guess you’re not the smartest person in the room for once, Stilinski. Now you know how the rest of us feel all the time.”

Lydia flashes Jackson a warm smile, and turns back to Stiles. “I told you, I did my research.”

“So what?” Stiles asks. “You’re still chasing the bite, Jackson?”

Jackson reaches for an apple and takes a bite. “So what if I am?”

“Even after the other night? You saw what hunters do.”

“This time I’m not chasing it,” Jackson says. “But I’m volunteering. An Alpha needs a pack.”

Stiles fights down the sudden rush of jealousy that wants to tell Jackson that the Stilinskis make a fine pack, thanks very much. Because it’s not exactly true, is it? Derek has the Stilinskis, and they could be a family for him—last night Derek folded laundry and sorted Dad’s socks, and it doesn’t get more family than that—but maybe Jackson’s right. Because Derek is an Alpha now. Maybe an Alpha needs more than a family. Stiles isn’t a werewolf. He can’t know the difference between family and pack, but he should know better than to assume there is none. Maybe an Alpha does need a pack, and there must be times where the meanings of the words overlap—he thinks of Derek’s story about Peter kidnapping the Hale kids for a Disneyland trip—but it’s possible they’re not an exact synonym.

And maybe Jackson isn’t being selfish. Maybe he’s not looking at what the bite can give him, but at what he can give Derek instead.

Stiles remembers in third grade when Jackson had a meltdown in class over one of those dumb family tree projects, and that’s how everyone found out he was adopted. Maybe, for Jackson, family was never quite what he needed to be. Maybe he thinks pack will give him something that he still feels he’s missing.

“Okay,” he says. “I mean, there’s no harm in offering, is there? If you know the risks.”

“I do.” Jackson crunches down on his apple.

Stiles glances at Lydia. “You said betas? Are you volunteering as well?”

Lydia huffs. “God, no. Trust me, that’s not even an option.”

“Because Scott’s no fan of Derek’s,” Stiles says. “Like, at all.”

“We know,” Jackson says, and rolls his eyes. “McCall is a dick.”

Stiles bristles out of habit. “Takes one to know one.”

Lydia elbows Jackson before he can retaliate. “We’re working on it, Stiles.”

Working on it? What does that even mean? Does she have an alphabetized list of potential beta candidates lined up or something? Will they have to submit résumés? Will there be interviews?

He’s just about to open his mouth to ask when he becomes aware of someone approaching in his periphery. He turns his head to see Allison standing by the table, her eyes red-rimmed and her hands clenched at her sides.

“Stiles?” she asks in a fragile voice.

“Oh. Um, hey, Allison.”

He’s aware that the entire cafeteria has stopped to watch this exchange, and wonders if they’re expecting fireworks.

Allison draws in an audibly shaky breath. “I just wanted to say that I’m really sorry for what happened to you, and your father and Stella. And I understand if you don’t ever want to talk to me again, but—”

“Oh, hey!” Stiles pushes his chair back so quickly that he almost overbalances, and leaps to his feet. “No, Allison. I mean, she was your aunt, but you didn’t _know_. I’m not going to hold it against you just because she was, well, crazy pants.”

Allison’s brow creases.

Okay, so that wasn’t the best way to phrase things. Stiles tries to regroup. “Anyway, if I was going to judge you on your relatives, okay your aunt tried to kill us, but your dad came through, so that totally evens things out, right? Math for the win!”

Lydia groans, and Jackson winces, but Allison only tilts her head and stares at Stiles blankly for a moment.

“Oh god,” Stiles says. “I can’t believe I said that.”

Allison blinks, and tears brim in her eyes, but at the same time her mouth twitches and a small, strangled noise escapes her. It might even be a laugh? “So we’re good, you and me?”

“Totally,” Stiles promises.

She shows him a tentative smile. “Thank you, Stiles.”

And then she darts forward and hugs him quickly before turning away and going back to sit with Scott.

No fireworks in the cafeteria today.

Stiles sits back down, shooting an accusatory look at Jackson when he sees his diminished amount of tater tots.

Jackson smirks. “Hey, I’m carb loading for lacrosse. What’s your excuse?”

“My excuse is I paid for those!”

Jackson shrugs.

“Asshole,” Stiles mutters.

Jackson’s smirk grows.

Lydia rolls her eyes, but she at least shoves her salad in Stiles’s direction so he doesn’t starve to death.


	23. Chapter 23

Stiles skips lacrosse so he can get Stella home and fed before Jackson and Lydia arrive. When they get home, he’s glad to see the TV news van that was camped out in the street all weekend has finally given up and gone away. Either they don’t have the staying power of real vultures, or someone else has had a more newsworthy traumatic experience for them to exploit. Rapid news cycle and short attention spans for the win, Stiles guesses.

He unlocks the front door, hoping that Derek hasn’t had a boring day. Like, what does Derek do in his free time anyway? Now that he’s not focusing on just surviving. It’s got to be a difficult transition to make, mentally. And he’s an Alpha now as well, which maybe complicates everything, and maybe doesn’t. There’s still so much that Stiles doesn’t know about werewolves.

He pushes the door open, and Stella darts in front of him into the house.

“Derek?” she calls as she heads like a homing pigeon for the kitchen. “Derek?”

Derek treads downstairs, the third step from the bottom creaking like it always does. He’s wearing sweatpants and a white tank top, and Stiles has to pause for a moment and pick his jaw up from the floor because _wow_. Just wow.

His shoulders, and his arms, and his collarbones, and, well, the entire package. Not that Stiles is looking at his package. Well—

Derek raises his eyebrows.

“Heeeey,” Stiles says, in a voice that’s supposed to be super casual, but really isn’t. He clears his throat. “So, Jackson and Lydia are coming over to see you soon. Is that okay? I mean, we can always bolt the door and flee to Mexico if it’s not, because I don’t know if you noticed, but they’re kind of hard to refuse.”

“I noticed,” Derek says, a smile softening his features. “And yeah, it’s fine.”

“Who wants peanut butter and honey sandwiches?” Stella yells from the kitchen.

“Honey?” Derek asks, raising his eyebrows.

“Oh, so much better than jelly,” Stiles says. “Just you wait.” 

He reaches out before he even realizes what he’s doing, and grabs Derek’s hand to tug him towards the kitchen.

And Derek lets it happen.

 

***

 

Lydia and Jackson arrive after lacrosse practice. Jackson smells of body wash and hair product. Stiles shows them into the living room, where Stella’s sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table doing her homework, and Derek’s sitting on the couch behind her, supervising. He looks a bit thrown by Common Core math, but who isn’t?

“Okay,” Stiles says, and takes a seat next to Derek, leaving Dad’s easy chair for Lydia and Jackson. “So Lydia found out that Kate’s father is going to be in town for the funeral.”

Derek’s eyes flash red, so Stiles figures it’s exactly the problem Chris said it would be, and that Lydia guessed. “When?”

Lydia sits down in Dad’s chair, and Jackson perches on the arm.

“The funeral is on Saturday,” she says. “But he might arrive a few days before that. Allison didn’t know.”

“Chris might,” Stiles says. “I’ll get Dad to ask him.”

Derek nods. “And you should warn Scott to stay away from Allison for a while. If Gerard finds out he’s a werewolf, he’ll go after him.”

“It’s like telling the moon not to rise, but I’ll give it a shot,” Stiles says.

“You should get him grounded,” Stella announces, looking up from her homework. “Make him get in trouble for something, so he’s not allowed to go on dates.”

“Slow down there, Little Miss Machiavelli,” Stiles says. “I’m starting to think that maybe I might have been a bad influence on you. I don’t know whether to be proud, or afraid.”

Stella rolls her eyes at him. “Liar.”

Stiles grins, and holds out his arm.

Stella fist bumps him.

“We’ll call that Plan B,” Stiles says.

“It’s a good plan,” Jackson says. “You’re smarter than your brother, aren’t you, Stella?”

“Don’t answer that,” Stiles commands. “It’s a trap.”

Stella ignores him, the traitor. “I’m the best reader in my class.”

“Well, we’re not here to discuss Scott,” Lydia says. “Gerard might find out he’s a werewolf, but he also might not. Whereas he _knows_ you’re a werewolf, Derek, and whatever story Chris spins him, he’d be a total idiot if he didn’t figure out Kate was killed coming after you and Peter.” She presses her mouth into a tight line for a moment. “And what are the chances he’s the forgiving type?”

Derek’s chest rumbles with a low growl.

“You need betas,” Lydia tells him frankly. “And you need them fast. I’m guessing that your pack bond with Scott is enough to keep you both from going feral, but he’s not what I’d call a right hand, is he?”

Lydia really wasn’t kidding about how much research she’d done. Stiles has been scouring the weirdest places on the internet for _months_. How the hell does she know this after only the weekend? There’s something she’s not telling him. There has to be.

“He’s not,” Derek agrees. “What are you suggesting?”

Lydia glances at Jackson.

“Me,” Jackson says. “I’m young and healthy, so the bite shouldn’t kill me. And I’d make a good werewolf.”

“No,” Derek says.

Jackson’s expression shutters. “Excuse me?”

“No.” Derek holds his gaze. “You _would_ make a good werewolf. But if I bit you now and you turned, I’d just be putting a target on you.”

“I know that,” Jackson says, his jaw tightening briefly. “I’m volunteering anyway.”

Lydia puts a hand on his forearm. “Jackson.”

He glances at her, and his shoulders sag.

“You would make a good werewolf,” Derek repeats, his tone steady. “And after everything is settled, and the Argents are off my back, I’ll offer you the bite. But not now. Not when it could get you killed.”

A silence settles over the living room, broken only by the soft scratch of Stella’s pencil against the paper as she does her homework.

“Okay,” Jackson says at last, even though Stiles knows for a fact that Jackson isn’t used to hearing the word ‘no’. If he’s pissed—and Stiles doesn’t think he is—he’s hiding it well. “I understand. The question is, then, what are you going to do about Gerard?”

Derek stares at him.

Jackson doesn’t even blink. “Because he will come looking for you, so you need to pick somewhere better to hide out until he’s gone again.” His gaze cuts to Stiles. “No offence, Stilinski, but this is going to be one of the first places he looks.”

“And what if he looks and I’m not here?” Derek asks. “But Stiles and Stella are?”

Stiles stomach clenches at the thought of it.

“My family has a cabin at the lake,” Lydia says. “And there’s nothing that connects me to you, Derek. Or even to Stiles, in particular. You’re welcome to use it. All of you.”

“My dad is not going to let me go and stay at a cabin in the woods to keep me safe,” Stiles says. “He’s seen horror movies.”

Lydia glances around the living room. “Then how well can you defend yourselves here?”

Stiles lets out a shaky breath. “You really think he’s going to come for us?”

Lydia shrugs. “I believe in preparing for the worst, don’t you?”

Stiles looks at Derek, hoping that Derek will tell him Lydia is over-reacting.

But Derek only looks back at him, Stiles’s worry reflected in his gaze.

 

***

 

It’s dusk when Stiles walks Lydia and Jackson out to Jackson’s car.

“Where the hell did you get all your info?” he asks. “There is no way you could have put all this together since Friday.”

Lydia shrugs, as though it doesn’t matter. “I found the right sources.”

“Where? I’ve been looking this shit up online for months!”

“A book,” Lydia says. “And yes, you can borrow it when I’m done with it.”

“What sort of book?” Stiles asks. “ _Werewolves for Dummies_?”

Lydia raises her eyebrows. “Sure, if by ‘dummies’ you mean ‘people who can read Latin’.”

Stiles screws up his face. “Where the hell did you find a werewolf primer, in _Latin_ , in Beacon Hills? Since _Friday_?”

“It doesn’t matter.” She opens the passenger door of the Porsche. “Just keep an eye on Derek, okay? This week’s going to be rough.”

Stiles blinks at her.

“Full moon, idiot,” Jackson says. “Wednesday.”

“Right.” Stiles chews his lower lip briefly. “His first full moon as an Alpha.”

“And not just any full moon,” Lydia says, climbing into the car. “I think you’ll find it’s the worm moon.”

“Did you get that out of your fancy Latin book too?” Stiles asks.

“No,” she says with a quirk smirk she must have learned from Jackson. “I googled that.”

Stiles steps back from the Porsche as it reverses out of the driveway.

What the hell is a worm moon?

 

***

 

“So,” Stiles says later that night over dinner, trying for a casual tone and missing. “Dad, what’s the plan for when Gerard Argent hits town?”

Dad sighs, and set his fork down. Glares at Stiles, then Stella, then Derek over his stir fry chicken. “The plan is that you kids and Derek stay here, and call me immediately if anyone comes by the house and I’m not here already.”

Derek lifts his chin. “Does Chris know how long Gerard is staying?”

“No.” Dad drums the tabletop with his fingertips. “He doesn’t. Look, I don’t like it any more than you, Derek, but all we can do is wait and see. He hasn’t committed any offences.”

“Yet,” Stiles says helpfully.

“Yet,” Dad repeats. “Meanwhile, Stiles, the combination to my gun safe that you absolutely don’t know?”

Stiles gives a guilty start.

“Yeah, I figured,” Dad says. “There’s a new Glock on the top shelf, but you’d better not touch it unless you need it.”

Stiles nods.

“Oooh,” says Stella. “Can I—”

“No!” Dad and Stiles exclaim at the same time.

Stella grunts like a dissatisfied warthog.

 

***

 

“First full moon as an Alpha on Wednesday,” Stiles says later that night, leaning in the bathroom doorway while Derek brushes his teeth.

Derek spits in the sink. “Yeah.”

“Are you going to be okay?” Stiles asks him. “Like, with wolfy stuff?”

Derek shoots him an unimpressed stare. “Wolfy stuff?”

“Sure.” Stiles curls his fingers into claws. “Grr. I mean, you gotta remember that my only experience of an Alpha was Peter, and, well, he was not the best example of lucid and rational thinking, you know? Which I get was probably unrelated to being an Alpha, but still.”

Derek straightens up. “My mom was an Alpha. Laura was. I’m not going to suddenly turn into a ravenous beast, Stiles.”

Stiles probably shouldn’t get warm all over thinking of Derek and ‘ravenous beast’ in the same sentence. What? He can’t help it if it sounds like the back cover of a trashy Regency romance where the innocent virgin is abducted by a licentious duke and heaving bosoms and breathy sighs abound.

“Okay,” he says. “Hey, um, what’s a worm moon? Because it sounds super fucking creepy, actually.”

“Oh,” Derek says. “Right, it’s the worm moon.” His expression softens. “It’s not creepy, actually. It’s called the worm moon because it’s the end of winter, and the ground begins to thaw, and the earthworms come back. It’s also called the sap moon because it’s when you can tap maple trees to make maple syrup, and the crow moon because the crows are cawing that it’s the end of winter.”

“All of those sound creepy without context,” Stiles says. “But I get it. The end of winter. The turn of the seasons. New life and all that.”

“Yeah,” Derek says, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “It’s new life, and new beginnings, and it’s about…hope, I guess.”

“Hope,” Stiles echoes softly, warmth flooding through him.

Derek deserves some of that, Stiles decides. They all do.


	24. Chapter 24

Tuesday floats by without incident. Stiles eats lunch at the popular table again, this time joined by Danny and a bunch of other people—including Allison and Scott—so werewolf business if off the table, but it’s kind of a relief to be talking about normal, boring high school stuff, even if half the cafeteria is still watching like they’re expecting Stiles and Allison to get into a throw-down fight.

Please. Stiles isn’t that stupid. Allison would wipe the floor with him, and he knows it.

Stiles does get the chance to talk to Scott in Biology though, because Mr. Dalloway is a year away from retirement and stopped giving a fuck about a decade ago.

“You have to stay away from Allison for a bit,” Stiles warns him. “Like, her grandfather is as psycho as Kate. If he finds out what you are, he’ll kill you.”

Scott’s brows draw together in a worried expression. “I mean, I get it, but she needs me right now, you know?”

Stiles pinches the bridge of his nose. “Scotty, bro, invite Ally to your place or something, but do _not_ go to her place, okay? Look, her parents aren’t going to complain she’s not spending time with dear old granddad, trust me, even if they hate your guts.”

“They really do,” Scott agrees.

“So promise me, okay?” Stiles presses.

“Yeah.” Scott’s forehead creases. “I promise.”

A part of Stiles breathes a little easier. The rest of him continues to quietly freak the fuck out.

 

***

 

“Take your Adderall,” Dad reminds Stiles on Wednesday morning, which is a good point, because Stiles woke up like he was trying to climb the walls, and now, after breakfast, he’s twitching like a strung-out squirrel.

He gulps down his pill with the last of his orange juice, and grabs his keys. “Stella, let’s go!”

Derek walks them to the front door.

“You feeling okay, big guy?” Stiles asks him. “With the moon and stuff?”

“I think I should be asking you that,” Derek says. He reaches out and squeezes Stiles’s shoulder gently.

“What?” Stiles might have missed the question because he was staring so hard at Derek’s mouth that he somehow didn’t hear the words that fell out of it.

Derek smiles at him, and is it Stiles’s imagination or is there something a little sharp in that smile? Something a little knowing. Something a little smug even, like he knows exactly what Stiles is thinking when he’s staring at his mouth.

Stiles doesn’t know if he wants to kiss that mouth, or just watch it work its way all over his body. With bonus teeth and tongue. And maybe even some growling.

Derek leans in close and says, slowly, his breath hot on Stiles’s ear: “Are _you_ feeling okay, Stiles?”

Stiles’s breath hitches, and he turns his face.

Too late. Derek is already leaning back, so a scrape of stubble against his jaw is all Stiles gets. Somehow though, that’s still enough sensation to go straight to his dick.

“Um,” he manages. “’m good.”

Derek suddenly looks way too fucking innocent, the asshole. “See you after school, Stiles.”

Stiles just blinks at him dumbly as Stella pulls him through the door.

The news van has finally given up and gone, so at least there’s not video evidence of Stiles’s face right now.

 

***

 

Dad’s working on Wednesday night, so Stiles and Stella and Derek make tuna casserole. Well, Stiles does. Stella makes a mess grating the cheese, and Derek makes her clean it up. So it evens out in the end.

The night is bright, the worm moon bathing the town in silver light.

“Okay,” Stiles says, as they wait for the casserole to cook, “so if we weren’t all under house arrest, what would an Alpha werewolf do on the night of a full moon?”

“When I was a kid, the pack would all gather in the Preserve, and run,” Derek says.  “In wolf form if we could, but in beta form if not. Sometimes even the humans ran with us too. My cousin Kellan, he was twelve. He always used to run with us, and then get tired, so we’d have to take turns carrying him home again.”

Stiles’s chest aches at the mention of Derek’s cousin. Just another name on the black granite Hale memorial now. The unfairness of it makes him want to cry, or scream.

“Where would you run to?” Stella asks from the floor, where she’s sweeping cheese bits into the dustpan.

“Just around the Preserve,” Derek says. “Nowhere special. It’s… it’s hard to explain.” There was a time when Derek would have stopped right there, but those walls have long since tumbled down. He makes the effort now, for Stiles and Stella. “The moonlight has a pull, like it’s magnetic. It’s stronger when it’s fuller. It’s… it’s our territory, and our blood, and our pack. Running as a wolf under the moonlight is… _joyful_.”

Except his voice cracks on that word, and Stiles’s eyes sting as he thinks of the magnitude of Derek’s loss once more. Even the faint echo of brought forth in conversation feels like too much, and he’s struck again by how astonishing it is that Derek’s still here, still standing. Stiles wouldn’t be. If he’d had to carry the weight of Derek’s grief, he thinks it would have crushed him years before.

Does Derek even know how strong he is?

“I’m sorry,” he says, and swallows. He crosses the kitchen to where Derek is leaning against the counter. “You don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to.”

Derek swallows too. His green eyes shine as he holds Stiles’s gaze. “I like sharing things with you.”

_Oh, fuck it._

Stiles steps forward, and doesn’t even care if he smells like tuna casserole. He reaches out and cups Derek’s face with his hand. Feels the scrape of stubble on his palm. And then he’s leaning into Derek’s space, his eyes fixed on Derek’s lips as they part slightly, and they’re kissing.

Stiles closes his eyes, and Derek’s hands come to rest on his hips.

It’s amazing.

It’s heart-stopping.

It’s—

“Gross!” Stella exclaims, and Stiles flails away from Derek.

“Um,” he says, and at least Derek looks as flushed and embarrassed as he does, right?

Stella’s stare judges them both harshly.

“Oh my god,” Stiles says. “Don’t you have homework or something?”

“Don’t _you_?” she shoots back.

“Well,” Stiles says feebly, “this is awkward.”

Derek laughs, and reaches out and threads their fingers together. He looks at Stella, eyebrows raised, and is the Alpha werewolf actually challenging the eight-year-old girl? Stiles thinks that’s what’s happening. He also has no idea who’s going to win, honestly.

“Gross,” Stella mutters, but shuffles forward so that Derek can pull her into a hug with his free arm.

Crisis averted, Stiles supposes, until Stella spills her guts to Dad and then Stiles has to explain what just happened. And honestly, he’s not sure how that’s going to go down just a few days after his ‘honest, Dad, we’re just being friends for now’ talk. Facebook is right. Relationships _are_ complicated, and Stiles feels is very much on a learning curve here. And, for the record, Stiles doesn’t like learning curves. He likes the learning part, just not the part where he doesn’t already know everything about any given subject. And on that note:

“Hey, Derek,” he says. “Is there some kind of amazing Werewolf for Dummies book, but in Latin, floating around or something?”

“What?”

“Lydia said she found all everything she knows from a book,” Stiles says. “If there’s been a book this whole time, and I’ve been accidentally clicking on links to furry pages for the past few months, I’m going to be annoyed.”

“Maybe,” Derek says, and shrugs. “Deaton probably has some, I guess.”

“I don’t think Lydia knows about Deaton though.”

“I mean, my family had books,” Derek said. “But most of them…” He shakes his head. “I guess there were some in the vault, but nobody can get into that.”

“Oooh,” Stiles says. “A vault! I have ten bucks and a lock-picking kit that calls you a liar!”

“No, I mean nobody except a Hale can get into it,” Derek says. “It’s magically protected.”

“So much for my lock picking kit,” Stiles says. And then, for Stella’s benefit: “Which I don’t own and was totally lying about.”

She side-eyes him.

When the oven timer dings, Stiles takes the casserole out and sets it to cool for a few minutes. Stella grabs the jug of water from the refrigerator, and Derek hunts down the plates and cutlery and glasses. Stiles like the familiarity of this. He likes how easily Derek has slotted in to their little family, and he’s pretty sure that Derek does too.

They eat at the kitchen table.

“So tonight’s the worm moon,” Stiles tells Stella. “That sounds super creepy, right?”

Stella shrugs. “I like worms. If we didn’t have worms, farmers wouldn’t be able to grow food.”

“Point,” Stiles says around a mouthful of tuna casserole.

“We have a worm farm at school," Stella says, and proceeds to regale them with tales of the worm farm. Stiles won’t lie, he’s had worse dinner conversations, and he likes watching Derek’s smile while Stella chatters at him happily.

His phone chimes in his pocket and he digs it out. It’s a message from Scott: _Allison’s grandfather is in town. I’m staying away like you said._

It’s followed a moment later by a message from Dad: _Gerard Argent has arrived in town. Stay alert._

Stiles sucks in a deep breath, and shows the messages to Derek and Stella.

“At least the grapevine’s working, I guess,” he says.

“Nobody will get in here, Stiles,” Derek tells him firmly. “I’m going to watch out for both of you, okay?”

“Okay,” Stiles says, and picks up his fork again. “We’ve got this, right?”

 

***

 

Stiles dozes off sometime around ten, thinking about the kiss he shared with Derek and fantasizing about where it might have ended up of Stella hadn’t been there. He flails awake again at an indeterminate point later when his phone blasts at him, the screen lighting up his bedroom. He reaches for it, misses, but gets it on the second try.

He squints at the screen, and answers it. “ _Jackson_?”

“Stilinski,” Jackson says. He sounds tense. Like someone-stole-his-hair-gel tense. Worse than that though, he sounds _scared_.

Stiles is instantly awake. “Jackson, what’s going on?”

Stiles is aware of his door opening, and Derek standing there. Werewolf hearing, right.

“We’re out at the Hale house,” Jackson says.

“Why the fuck are you—”

Jackson cuts him off. “Right now Gerard Argent is pointing a gun at Lydia’s head. I’m so fucking sorry, Stiles, but he says if he doesn’t get Derek within the next twenty minutes, he’ll kill us.”

The call ends, and Stiles’s blood runs cold.


	25. Chapter 25

Stiles wakes Stella first, shaking her gently by the shoulder. “Stella? Stella?”

She blinks up at him from underneath a tangle of hair. “What?”

“Me and Derek… we have to go. You have to stay here though, okay?” He’s still struggling into his jacket. “Tell me you’re awake, okay?”

He doesn’t want her waking up and finding them gone and freaking out. So this—waking her in order to freak her out—is somehow the better option. Jesus fuck. His life.

“What?” She pushes her comforter back. “Stiles! No! Dad said we have to stay here!”

“I’m calling Dad,” Stiles says. “I’m calling him, and telling him, but you have to stay here, okay?”

She’s eight. Jesus, she’s only eight, but he can’t take her with him. And he can’t make Derek go alone.

“No!” Stella clambers out of bed. “No, Stiles!”

Stiles is already moving, out of Stella’s bedroom and down the stairs.

Twenty minutes. They have twenty minutes to get to the Preserve.

“Stiles!” Stella yells, her voice wavering between anger and fear. “Dad said we have to stay here!”

Stiles goes into Dad’s study, and crouches down in front of the gun safe. It takes his shaking fingers a few tries to get the combination right, and all he can hear is a clock ticking away in the back of his skull. Twenty minutes. Probably closer to fifteen now, right? He takes the Glock, checks the clip, and checks the safety is on.

He runs into Stella again on his way out the front door.

“Stiles! Don’t leave me alone!”

Stiles doesn’t think he’s ever felt like such an asshole. “Stella,” he says, and hugs her tightly, “you’ll be okay. Lock the door behind us. We'll be back soon.”

Derek slips out ahead of him.

Stiles follows, pulling the door shut.

Behind it, he can hear Stella crying.

 _Please_ , he tells her silently. _Please please please._

He holds his breath until he hears the lock turn.

 

***

 

They take the Camaro.

The reflections from the streetlights slide smoothly up the windshield as Stiles waits for Dad to answer. It takes a couple of rings.

“Stiles?”

“Jackson called,” Stiles says. “Gerard has him and Lydia at the Hale house. He’s going to shoot them if Derek doesn’t meet him there.”

“Fuck,” Dad says, and then: “Where are you, son?”

“I’m in the car with Derek,” Stiles says, shocked at how calm his voice sounds. “Stella’s at home. I made her lock the door after we left.”

“Stiles!” Dad’s angry, and Stiles doesn’t know if it’s because he’s going with Derek, or that he left Stella alone, or just that the universe is punching them all in the face again. “I’m on my way. I want Derek to pull over. Now.”

Stiles looks at the display in the Camaro. “Dad, we only have thirteen minutes. We’re not pulling over.”

“Stiles!”

“Sorry,” Stiles says. “I love you.”

And then he ends the call.

 

***

 

The Preserve is so beautiful in the moonlight. The full moon is bright enough that the night hardly seems dark at all. Stiles stares into the trees and thinks of the Hale pack running through the woods on nights like these, and it must have been amazing.

“You’ve never asked me,” Derek says haltingly.

Stiles turns his head to look at him. “Never asked you what?”

“If my family did anything to deserve what happened to us.”

Stiles swallows. “Why would anyone think that?”

Derek’s mouth turns down at the corners. “Scott did.”

Stiles grunts. “Yeah, well I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Scott can be a dick.”

Derek actually manages a faint smile at that. “I noticed.”

“It comes from a good place though,” Stiles says. “If that helps. Like, Scott still thinks that there’s actually order or something in the universe, and that bad things only happen to bad people.”

“You don’t?”

Stiles snorts. “Cop’s kid, Der.”

He checks the time again. They’re about five minutes out from the Hale house, and they have seven minutes to make it in the time Gerard gave them. It’s not a lot of wriggle room to come up with and enact a plan, but who is Stiles kidding? There’s no plan. There’s just him and Derek, and a dumb fucking hope that they can somehow save Lydia and Jackson and still walk away from this.

Stiles curls his fingers around the grip of the Glock.

The clearing around the Hale house is awash in silver light. There’s a car parked out the front. Not an SUV this time. A dark sedan, that looks like an airport rental. Jackson’s Porsche is here as well, and looks like it has been for a while. A few leaves litter it like pieces of confetti.

Derek kills the engine. “I want you to stay in the car,” he says. “Get in the driver’s seat, and stay in the car.”

Stiles doesn’t say anything. Just shakes his head.

“Stiles,” Derek says. “Please.”

“No can do,” Stiles says faintly. “We’re in this together, sourwolf.”

Derek reaches out and presses his hand to Stiles’s face. Slides his fingertips slowly down his cheek. Drags his thumb over his bottom lip. It feels more like a farewell, like one last, lingering touch, than Stiles wants to admit.

“Okay,” Stiles whispers. “Let’s go.”

 

***

 

The Hale house is dark, mostly, and Stiles wasn’t expecting that. There’s moonlight spilling through the long-ago busted windows and the holes in the walls and the ceiling. Stiles follows Derek through the front room, floorboards creaking underneath them, and that’s when he seems the glimmer of light ahead. Candlelight?

Great, because all this place needs is more fire.

The room down the hallway is mostly intact, though the walls are black and charred, and the ceiling must only be hanging there by sheer force of will.

It was candlelight.

There’s a candle on the floor, and a book open next to it.

Stiles barely notices them.

Because Lydia is kneeling on the floor, and an old man has a fist tangled in her hair and a gun pressed against the back of her skull.

And Stiles remembers exactly how that feels, and how it turned his blood to ice.

Jackson is kneeling on the other side of the room, hands clasped behind his head, an expression on his face like murder. There are two hunters wearing body armor and goggles like they think they’re a fucking SWAT team standing on either side of him, guns pointed at him.

And Chris Argent isn’t here to save them this time.

“Ah, Derek,” says the old man, delighted like a cartoon villain. “How nice of you to join us!”

Like, could he _be_ any more clichéd?

“And you brought the sheriff’s son,” Gerard Argent says. “It’s always useful to have more collateral.”

And then, like he’s summoned it, Stiles hears the faint sound of sirens in the distance. Dad’s coming, and it sounds like he’s bringing the entire department with him. Which, in Beacon Hills on a Wednesday night shift is probably a total of three deputies, but still. It’s the thought that counts.

“Let them go,” Derek says, his voice steady. “They’re just kids.”

And if Stiles thought this was somehow going to turn into a hero versus villain dialogue, with lots of posturing and time-wasting on both sides, then he couldn’t be more wrong. Apparently that shit only happens in movies or in the comic books Stiles loves, because Gerard doesn’t even bother answer.

He just lifts his gun and shoots Derek, and Derek hits the floor.

And then it all goes to hell, and everything happens in flashes.

Derek roars, and lurches to his feet again.

Lydia wrenches free of Gerard, leaving him holding a handful of her hair. Her momentum carries her in Stiles’s direction, and he darts forward to grab her hand, but misses.

Something punches him in the right shoulder hard enough to spin him around and knock him down.

As he’s going, he sees Jackson kicking out at one of the hunters.

Sees the other one raise his gun.

Stiles puts out his hands to brace himself, but his right arm won’t work, and he hits the floor hard. The Glock falls from his numb grip and slides out of reach.

He hears the floorboards groan and creak, and he can’t get up, and he doesn’t know why.

And then Gerard Argent is standing over him, and the gun that was pointed at Lydia is now pointed right at Stiles’s face, and oh god.

The sirens are getting closer, but Dad’s going to be too late, isn’t he? He’s going to get here and Stiles will already be dead, and this is how Dad will remember him—with a hole in his forehead and the back of his skull blown away.

And then Lydia screams.

And Lydia screams.

And Lydia screams.

 

***

 

If sound travels in a wave, then Lydia’s scream is a tsunami.

It knocks Gerard and the hunters to the floor as it moves outward from her, and Stiles holds his left hand over his left ear, and tries to tilt his head and lift his right shoulder to cover his right. The floorboards warp and buckle as Lydia’s scream washes over them. The ceiling shudders and shifts. The candle topples over and the flame is drowned in wax, and everything is darker than before.

And then it’s silent, and Stiles can’t hear a thing except the buzzing in his skull.

Derek is the first to move, lurching forward towards Gerard, and Gerard might look like a decrepit old man but he’s apparently in better shape than Stiles, because he’s already back on his feet by the time Derek reaches him.

Derek has his claws, but Gerard has a gun.

And that gun is now pointed in Derek’s face.

Derek growls, the low sound reverberating through the room.

One of the hunters is still down.

The other one is trying to get his knees under him to stand, and Stiles tries that too, but he can’t. He can’t, and he’s still too dizzy to work out why he’s lying in a pool of blood and his arm doesn’t work.

Derek’s going to die, and Stiles can’t figure out how to get back on his feet.

And then there’s another figure in the room.

Stiles blinks and squints in the moonlight.

The man is rising from the floor like he’s been lying there this whole time, invisible, and Stiles has no idea what the fuck is happening at this point.

And neither does Gerard Argent when the man wraps an arm around his throat and squeezes. Gerard chokes and shakes, eyes bulging.

“Put your weapons down, or I’ll rip his fucking head off.”

The two hunters obey.

“And now _run_.”

The hunters don’t need to be told twice: their plan has gone to shit and the sirens are getting closer.

They run.

Peter Hale smiles, the moonlight glinting on his teeth as he surveys the carnage.

“Hello, children,” he says, still grasping a thrashing Gerard Argent in a brutal chokehold. “Did you miss me?”

Stiles would laugh, probably, but he’s busy passing out.


	26. Chapter 26

Cold air and beeping.

Stiles knows before he even opens his eyes that he’s in the hospital, but he opens his eyes anyway to confirm it. Yep. The hospital. And Dad’s dozing in the chair next to his bed, Stella on his lap, which must be uncomfortable as hell for both of them.

He opens his dry mouth. “Wh…”

Dad’s eyes flash open. He leans forward, wincing, and rubs Stella on the back to wake her. “Stiles? You okay, kiddo?”

“Why’m I here?” he croaks.

“You got shot in the shoulder,” Dad says. “You’ve been in surgery.”

Oh, well that definitely explains why his arm wouldn’t work. Also, hospital-grade painkillers are _amazing_ because Stiles isn’t feeling a damn thing. Not even guilt, which he knows he totally should be with the look Dad is leveling at him.

“I told you to pull over,” Dad says.

“Mmm.”

Stella blinks away. “Stiles?” she mumbles, and then scrambles to her feet. “Stiles!”

“Careful,” Dad says in a warning tone as Stella tries to clamber into the bed with Stiles. “Watch his arm, Stella.”

“I’m gonna…” Stiles says, pressing the button for pain relief. “Just have more of this.”

He passes out again, with Stella cuddled up against his good side.

 

***

 

Derek slinks into Stiles’s hospital room early on Thursday morning, carrying enough guilt for both of them. He’s also carrying a banana milkshake from the twenty-four hour diner on Third.

He’s amazing.

(Stiles is on a lot of morphine.)

Stiles makes a grabby hand for him. “You’re okay. Oh, thank Jeebus. You’re okay.”

Derek leans down and kisses him softly on the forehead. Stiles basks in the warmth of that for all of three seconds, then makes a grabby hand for the milkshake.

He slurps on it for a while.

“Did I imagine Peter?” he mumbles. “Is he a zombie now? Big ol’ zombiewolf?”

He dozes off again before Derek can answer him.  

 

***

 

Stiles pieces together what happened during his hospital stay. When he’s released on Friday evening—with strict instruction about meds and wound care—he thinks he’s got the full picture. More or less. Gerard Argent is in jail, awaiting trial for shooting Stiles, the other hunters have dropped off the face of the planet, Dad is running yet another misinformation campaign about what really happened and carefully excising the Hales from the narrative, and—oh yeah—Peter Hale came back from the dead and saved everyone’s ass.

That’s kind of the big one.

Stiles keeps coming back to that, and he really hopes that someone explains it to him at some point.

Dad picks him up from the hospital.

“Where’s Stella?” Stiles asks, as Dad clips his seatbelt up for him. Having his arm in a sling is going to be a royal pain in the ass. How’s he supposed to play video games Or do his homework? Or jerk off? He only ever jerks off with his right hand. Jesus. He’s going to have to change his entire routine.

“She’s at home,” Dad says. “She and Derek are making dinner.”

Oh, good, because Stiles was half-worried Dad would throw Derek out of the house for what happened on Wednesday night.

“It wasn’t Derek’s fault,” he says at last, carefully. “I couldn’t let him go alone, you know? And we couldn’t wait for you.”

“Stiles,” Dad says frankly as they wait at a red light. “I know why you did what you did. But as your father, I will never be happy that you chose to put yourself in danger like that. I’m angry as hell, kid, but I’m proud of you too.”

Stiles wrinkles his nose.

“It’s complicated,” Dad says. “I want to hug you and wring your neck at the same time.”

“You should ask Peter for pointers on that,” Stiles suggests.

“Not funny,” Dad says, but his mouth quirks anyway. “You’re grounded, by the way.”

“That’s fair. I’m glad I’m still here so you can ground me, honestly.” The words are meant to sound glib, but they come out too brittle for that, and Stiles’s breath hitches.

“Me too, kiddo,” Dad says, his eyes shining. “Me too.”

They drive the rest of the way home in silence.

When they get there, Stiles sees Derek’s Camaro parked in the driveway, and Jackson’s Porsche out on the street. All the lights are on downstairs and when Dad pulls in, the front door swings wide open and Stella races out to meet them.

“Stiles! We’re having pizza! Derek helped me make them! And Jackson cut the peppers for us!”

“Awesome!” Stiles hugs her with his good arm. “So we’re having a pizza party?”

“Yes!” Stella tugs at Dad’s belt loops. “Dad, did you get balloons? You were supposed to get balloons!”

“And I told you that I wasn’t going to leave your brother in the car while I stopped off for balloons,” Dad says.

Stella huffs, affronted.

“I don’t need balloons,” Stiles says. “Just pizza and you, you little peanut.”

Despite the lack of balloons, there’s still a party atmosphere inside the house. Stiles gets settled in Dad’s easy chair in the living room, careful not to jostle his arm when he sits, and it isn’t long before Derek appears, a cup of soda in his hand for Stiles, and grabs the footstool so he can sit next to him. He curls his fingers loosely around Stiles’s good wrist, and Stiles’s pain drains away.

“Hey,” Stiles says.

Derek smiles at him. “Hey.”

Stiles looks up as Lydia steps into the living room, holding a tray of pizza. She sets it down on the coffee table. “Welcome home, Stiles.”

She leans down and kisses his cheek.

Stiles isn’t going to lie. A month ago he would have been fucking ecstatic to have Lydia Martin kiss his cheek. Now it’s…well, it’s about as exciting as when Stella does it. It’s warm and sweet, and _sisterly_. And Stiles wouldn’t change that for the world at this point.

Lydia fetches him a piece of pizza, and he reluctantly removes his arm from Derek’s loose grasp to take it.

“There another one coming,” Lydia says.

“I’m not really that hungry. But this smells great.” He takes a bite. “Meanwhile, I think you have some explaining to do, don’t you?”

“Do I?” Lydia asks, sitting on the couch and helping herself to a slice.

“Like, what the hell were you and Jackson even doing out there the other night?”

Jackson, speak of the devil, wanders in with the second pizza. “Sup, Stilinski?”

“Sup,” Stiles says. “I’d fist bump you, but, well, pizza takes precedence.”

Jackson sits down next to Lydia.

It doesn’t take long for Dad and Stella to join them—and Peter Hale as well, who is definitely not dead. Definitely, absolutely not dead. Stella would fall over if she was tugging so hard on the hand of a corpse.

“Oh, come on,” Stiles says. “Fill me in here! What the hell even happened on Wednesday night?”

“Actually, you should be asking what happened on Friday night,” Peter Hale says with a smirk.

“Friday?” Stiles wrinkles his nose. “I was there on Friday. I _know_ what happened on Friday.”

Lydia smiles at him. “Well, about that…”

And she tugs the sleeve of her blouse down off her shoulder so that Stiles can see the wound on her pale skin he first noticed at the cemetery that night and then subsequently forgot about: a healing bite mark.  

 

***

 

So, Friday.

The dance, then Dad’s call to the Hale house, then the crash, and then every other fucking thing. 

On the way to the cemetery, when Stiles was holding Derek’s hand in the back of Chris’s SUV, apparently a very interesting discussion was taking place in the Porsche. A discussion in which Peter Hale proposed a crazy idea, and Lydia thought it over in that fast-paced brain of hers, and agreed.

 

***

 

“Shit,” Stiles says, his heart beating faster. “He must have been incredibly fucking persuasive.”

“Language,” Dad says, at the same time as Stella pipes up, “Swear jar!”

Lydia tilts her head thoughtfully, and flashes a smile at Peter. “Not really.”

“Not _really_?”

“He told me I stank of magic,” Lydia said, “and asked if I wanted to find out what sort.” She shrugs. “What was I supposed to say?”

“You weren’t worried about turning?” Stiles asks. “Or _dying_?”

Lydia raises her eyebrows, and smiles slightly. “Against an entire lifetime of not knowing something so fundamental about myself? Really, Stiles?”

No wonder he had a crush on her for so long. She’s fucking fearless.

“So what’s this got to do with how Peter’s here though?” he asks, setting his pizza down on the arm of the chair. “Wait. What sort of magic _are_ you?”

“I’m a banshee,” Lydia says, as matter-of-fact as if she’s telling him her star sign. “I can feel death coming. I can predict it. And I can do that because I apparently have a foot in both worlds. Or both sides of the veil.” She selects a second slice of pizza. “Is that poetic, or clichéd? Hmm.”

“So if you have a foot in both worlds,” Stiles says slowly, “then you exist in some place where there’s no barrier. You’re…” He wrinkles his nose. “Where you are, there’s a _gateway_?”

Peter smirks. “That was my theory, certainly.”

“Hell of a theory,” Stiles murmurs.

Peter shrugs. “If I was going to die anyway, and the chances of that were high, I literally had nothing to lose.”

“So that’s what happened,” Lydia says, although Stiles feels she’s explained exactly nothing. “Peter bit me, created a bond even through the veil, and on the night of the worm moon Jackson and I went out to the Hale house to perform the ritual that would bring him back. Which is where Gerard Argent found us.”

“I’m so confused,” Stiles says at last, and picks up his pizza again. “Where did you find this ritual anyway? In your amazing Latin werewolf book?”

“Yes, actually.”

“Where did you find your magic book anyway?”

Lydia exchanges a look with Jackson. “In the Hale vault.”

“Wait.” Stiles screws up his face. “Derek, you said that nobody could get into the Hale vault, unless…” He trails off.

“I told Jackson to look there,” Peter says.

Stiles punches Derek in the shoulder with his good arm. “You said nobody could get in there unless they were a _Hale_!”

“Right?” Jackson says. “You’d think the werewolf and the banshee thing would have been the biggest reveal I got that night, wouldn’t you? Apparently not.” 

“Holy shit,” Stiles says. “Holy _shit_.”

“Swear jar!” Stella reminds him through a mouthful of pizza.

“So who—“ Stiles cuts himself off. “Sorry, no, that’s none of my business.”

“Peter,” Jackson says.

"Oh,” says Stiles. “That’s super weird.”

Jackson’s pinched expression totally agrees with him on that, but he seems to be rolling with it. And super weird or not, and whatever the story is behind Jackson’s adoption, a part of Stiles is glad that Jackson didn’t just get a name carved into black granite. That, however it works out, it’s someone who’s still _here_. Someone he can talk his issues out with, or punch them out if he needs, and he’s not just going to get silence in return.

“Okay,” Stiles says, shaking his head. “So you got the book from the vault. But why…” He looks to Derek helplessly.

“We didn’t say anything about trying the ritual because we didn’t know if it would work.” Lydia exhales slowly. “And we’d hoped, that if it did, we’d have Peter back before Gerard even came to town. But that didn’t work out how we’d hoped.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Peter says airily. “I’ve always been a fan of a dramatic entrance.”

“You couldn’t have dramatically entered _before_ I got shot?” Stiles asks.

“Well,” Peter concedes. “Perhaps my timing was a little off.”

“Well,” Stiles says, “next time—”

Derek growls, and flashes his red eyes.

“No,” Dad says. “There will be no next times. You’re grounded until you’re forty, remember?”

“Excuse you, you said thirty!”

“Kiddo, you’re grounded until you reach retirement age,” Dad tells him. “No more werewolf shenanigans for you!”

 

***

 

Later, much later, Stiles is laying in bed, his left hand tangled in Derek’s hair as they exchange soft, sweet kisses in the moonlight.

“Hey, Der?” he asks in a whisper. “Do you think this counts as werewolf shenanigans?”  

Derek laughs softly against the line of his jaw. “Shh!”


	27. Chapter 27

Things settle, in the end.

Crazy Kate Argent and her crazy father are the subject of gossip at first, but then it fades. There are other small town scandals that take their place. Gossip is seasonal, cyclical. By the time Stiles gets his sling off, people have stopped asking him what happened the night he got shot.

Peter’s reappearance is the talk of Beacon Hills for a little while. Amazing, what a lengthy stint in a foreign rehabilitation facility and the world’s best plastic surgeons can do. You’d never even know he’d been in a fire.

Even the most dedicated town gossips don’t connect the Hales and the Argents, because why would they?

By the time the school year ends, life in Beacon Hills has returned to normal.

Well, the new normal, which for Stiles includes werewolves and banshees, and dating the Alpha of the Hale pack while trying to pretend to his dad that they’re still just friends. Dad knows better, of course. He presents Stiles with a pack of condoms the week before his seventeenth birthday, “Because god only knows you won’t wait until you’re eighteen.”

It’s a fair point.

It takes a while, but Stiles and Scott repair their friendship, on the unspoken proviso that they don’t talk about werewolf stuff. Scott is still frustrating. He doesn’t want to join Derek’s pack officially, even though it’s his bond with the Hales that’s keeping him from turning into a feral omega.

“It’s just… Allison doesn’t know about any of this stuff,” he says. “I just want to be _normal_.”

Jackson rolls his eyes. “You’re an idiot, McCall.”

It’s also a fair point.

“It’s Beacon Hills, Scotty,” Stiles says. “She’s not blind. She’ll figure it out sooner or later, you know.”

“Yeah.” Scott’s brow creases. “But, just for now… I want to be normal.”

Stiles feels a tightness in his chest at the longing expression on Scott’s face.

 _But you’re not_ , he wants to say. _And the more you try to ignore it, the harder it gets for you_. And it might be the truth, and they might both know it, but Stiles can’t be the one who says it aloud. He only nods, and watches as Scott walks away.

“I can’t wait to see how this is going to come back and kick him in the ass,” Jackson says.

“That’s my friend you’re talking about,” Stiles reminds him.

Jackson snorts. “So?”

Jackson’s still pretty much an asshole—getting the bite and joining the Hale pack, well, _rejoining_ the Hale pack, didn’t magically imbue him with humility or anything—so some things never change.

 

***

 

Things settle.

Stella clings to Dad like a barnacle, and Stiles is hurt by that for a while. He feels a little like he’s been replaced or something, because he’s always straddled this strange line between being her brother and being her caregiver, and now it’s like she’s trying to cut him off from one. She wants Dad to tuck her in at night and read to her, and she gets huffy when he tells her to do her homework, and when she falls off her bike and scrapes her knee one afternoon, she refuses to let him put Band-Aids on it.

“Stiles,” she says. “I can do it!” And then she closes the bathroom door in his face.

“Kid,” Dad tells him when he gets home that night, “she saw you stuck in my cruiser, and she saw you with a gun in your face, and then she saw you in the hospital after you got shot. She’s seen, literally, that you’re not bulletproof. She’s seen that you’re just a kid too, and it’s scared her.”

“She doesn’t think I can protect her,” Stiles says numbly.

“No,” Dad tells him. “She just thinks it’s her job to protect you as much as it’s yours to protect her. She’s adjusting, Stiles. Give her some time.”

Things settle.

 

***

 

Stiles and Derek are taking things slow, because that’s the smart thing to do, right? Stiles is barely seventeen, and Derek _isn’t_ , and their lives got thrown together in a series of traumatic events, and taking it slow is the smart thing to do.

Stiles knows that.

It’s just that sometimes when he looks at Derek he feels like he’s holding a secret inside him that just wants to burst free.

Because when he looks at Derek, he imagines a whole lifetime with him, spooling out in front of them like a piece of thread, and Stiles can’t imagine ever wanting to be with anyone else. It calms something inside Stiles that he didn’t even realize was so unsettled. He’s happy. It’s such a scant word to encompass everything he’s feeling, but that’s what it is. He’s _happy_. He loves Derek, and he’s happy.

They’re taking it slow, so Stiles doesn’t say it yet. But also, maybe it doesn’t need to be said?

Because he gets the feeling, when Derek looks back at him with that soft smile of his, that he’s thinking the exact same thing.

  

*** 

 

Stiles and Stella are grocery shopping one Saturday morning when they run into Chris and Victoria Argent doing the same. Stiles is thrown for a moment. Like of course hunters need groceries too, but meeting them in front of the dairy case is still kind of unexpected.

“Stiles,” Chris says. “Stella. How are you doing?”

Stella sneaks some chocolate pudding into the cart while Stiles isn’t watching closely enough.

“Good,” Stiles says, and wishes it didn’t sound so much like a question. “Um, you?”

“Good,” Chris says.

Victoria looks as cold as the yogurt.

“Not so bad,” Chris says. “Listen, have Derek give me a call, okay? It’s time we made an official treaty with the Alpha of Beacon Hills.”

“Oh, okay,” Stiles says. “I’ll let him know.”

Chris and Victoria move on, one wobbly wheel on their cart squeaking.

Stiles exchanges a look with Stella.

Stella shrugs and dumps some more pudding in the cart.

 

***

 

Stiles has good days and bad days. So does everyone; Derek, Peter, Dad, and Stella. Even Lydia and Jackson sometimes go too quiet, too still, and Stiles knows they’re thinking about that night Gerard threatened them. It’s…it’s not a small thing to have a gun shoved in your face by someone who fully intends to pull the trigger.

Sometimes Stiles wakes up from a nightmare, his breath sucked out of him, and it takes him a while to remember that he’s fine now, that he’s okay, that Kate is dead and Gerard is in jail.

And sometimes Stella wakes up screaming, thinking she’s seeing Peter burn to death all over again. By the time Stiles stumbles into her room Dad is usually already there, rocking her back and forth as she hugs him tightly, making soft shushing noises to calm her down.

It’s mostly good though.

Peter and Derek have moved into a loft downtown. Stiles and Stella were not happy about that—for very different reasons—but Dad muttered something about not running a halfway house for goddamn werewolves, which is fair. Stiles and Stella go there most afternoons after school anyway. Stella and Peter are working their way through all the Roald Dahl books. Stella reads them aloud while Peter listens avidly.

“I think he misses it,” Derek murmurs one afternoon, drawing Stiles up the stairs to his bedroom where they can make out in private for a while. “Not the coma, but having her voice be this one bright part of it, you know? And kids, too. He misses having kids around all the time.”

Jackson and Lydia are frequent visitors to the loft as well. Stiles has no idea what Peter has told Jackson about his past, but Jackson is a lot more settled these days. His relationship with Peter can be a little snarky, a little barbed, but then, the apple didn’t fall far from the sarcastic tree, did it?

And Stiles finally gets a look at the amazing Werewolf for Dummies book.

It’s totally in Latin.

Fuck. Now he needs to learn Latin, because Google translate is not as helpful as it pretends to be.

So that’s a project for his vacation, he guesses.

On the Friday afternoon that school ends, Stiles heads home, dumps his backpack on the floor, and listens to Stella regale him about all her plans for her vacation.

“Did you feed Matilda?” he asks her, because the kitten’s mewling like he’s going to starve to death if he doesn’t get nourishment _now_.  

Stella hurries off to give him some food.

“And change his litter!” Stiles calls after her. His phone buzzes, and he checks it. It’s a text from Derek: _Peter says we’re going to pick up pizzas. Be ready at 6?_

Stiles sighs. Really? Like they all need to go? But he texts back a quick _OK_. Then he checks to see that Stella is feeding Matilda like she said, throws some laundry in the washing machine, and kills time playing some dumb game on his phone for a while.

At just past six, Peter pulls into the driveway in his ridiculously expensive silver Mercedes-Benz GLS.

“Stella! Peter’s here!”

Stella bounces out the front door, leaving Stiles to close and lock it.

When he gets to the car, Jackson is climbing out the front passenger seat. “Peter says Stella gets to ride shotgun.”

Of course he does.

Stiles rolls his eyes and gets in the back.

All the way in the back, which is where Derek’s sitting, looking slightly harried and suspicious, the way he often does when Peter is in charge of any group activity.

Lydia turns around in her seat and clicks her tongue at him. “Plaid, Stiles, really? On a Friday night?”

“We’re going to get pizzas,” he tells her. “Not to the Met Gala.”

 

***

 

An hour later, listening to the audiobook of _Matilda_ , Stiles jabs Derek in the ribs. “Hey, Der? We _are_ going to get pizza, aren’t we? Because we’ve been driving for a while.”

Derek sighs.

 

***

 

Stella is snuffling in her sleep in the front of the car as they head down the highway.

Lydia and Jackson are curled up together in the middle seats.

Stiles is leaning against Derek in the back, their clasped hands on his thigh, watching the way their fingers twine together as the lights on the highway flash past.

The audiobook cuts out as a call comes in on Peter’s phone.

“Ah,” Peter says. “John, how are you?”

“Peter, where are you?” Dad asks. “And where are my kids?”

 “Where are we?” Peter smirks at Stiles in the rearview. “We’re about halfway to Disneyland. See you in four days!”

Stiles turns his head and laughs quietly into Derek’s shoulder, and Derek squeezes his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone for joining me on another WIP where I had no idea where things would end up! 
> 
> And for anyone wondering why Gerard is still alive at the end of this one--yes, that's because at some point there will be a sequel, I think, and who better to play the part of the villain than Gerard?


End file.
